


In Defiance of Divinity

by herladyofprose



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anthropomorphic, Blood and Gore, F/F, F/M, Furry, Royalty, Unrequited Lust, Vore, Weight Gain, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-29 03:47:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 55,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14464332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herladyofprose/pseuds/herladyofprose
Summary: This is an original story set in an original universe. It is in some ways a fetish work, though plot tends to take center stage.





	1. Prelude - The Duke Emerges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For picture references of the principle characters, please consult the links below:
> 
> Aurelina: [Here](https://imgur.com/a/DTVeI)  
> Breyolt: [Here](https://imgur.com/a/QUwMexZ)

It had been three years, and for all he had trod on during that time: snow, dirt, mud, blood and bodies, the paved stone felt the same under his boots. Breyolt’s red-tinted sabatons and oversized golden medal provided the acoustics of a soldier’s march. The wolf, called an alpha male, had returned to the place he so despised. The place which was built on pretense, preening, and pleasing the despot they all served with prurient abandon. Every sight and smell of the capitol city Aurelia had remained identical to his last visit, which included a drunken foray into a number of bodices he now could not remember. Not for lack of trying, but for lack of care. The palace, now that his carriage had deposited him in its open gardens, shimmered with the same gilded splendor he found so unnecessary. Every woman he passed bowed to him. Some men displayed the same behavior. Broad shouldered and possessing keen yellow eyes, the Duke of Linalita striding confidently through the gardens toward the entrance to the royal palace was a rare and agreeable sight. His grin flitted by like a row of razors as he passed guard after guard in heavy, impenetrable plate armor. He wondered if this meeting with his ruler would be his last. Everyone he passed reassured themselves that this man, Breyolt Selfridge, was beyond Her reproach. But it was a fact well known by even the lowliest peasant that even those heroes who succeeded overmuch in war – and Breyolt did succeed overmuch – were often executed for daring to attempt to steal glory away from the All-Queen. While Breyolt feared many things, he did not fear death.

He reminded himself of her cruelty; considered both the stories he had heard and that he had witnessed. The All-Queen was capricious and cruel, but also capable of lavishing great wealth and comfort upon those she favored. Breyolt’s ancestral home was not anywhere near the palace, and thus he had managed to escape a more direct role in her court, but there was a time when he was a fixture at the balls and parties that choked the palace halls with silk dresses and tables of ostentatious comestibles.

The facts were plain: Her Utmost had always existed. She had not always lived in the imperial palace for she pre-dated it. Countries and civilizations had risen and fallen under her rule and any fool who could read knew that. Others knew from the proclamations and the memories of those of advanced age. For the last three hundred years she had ruled from the capitol after establishing it and, some accounts assert, creating it overnight. The city blossomed with wealth and creativity, art and culture. At its head, its apex, sat the palace grounds. They sprawled and rose like beautiful plants of tan stone towers and tiled maroon roofs and turrets. It was a gingerbread sculpture housing the witch within. The gardens through which Breyolt walked bathed his sensitive nose in the scents of peonies and roses, pinks and reds and whites of innumerable individual breeds. As without the palace, so within: nobles of rank were welcomed and all others had to make do basking in the palace’s shadow instead of its light.

Of her absolute presence all knew, and of her malice toward her own subjects all knew better. Breyolt better still than most. Like the hobbies of the earth were to call tornadoes, split the earth, or erupt volcanoes, the All-Queen’s were to coddle and kill. She had tea in front of public executions of leaders who had defied her. Every sip of perfumed black tea was brightened by the sound of an axe whirring through the air. The impassive inventiveness of her chefs and patissiers was legendary. She nibbled lady fingers, maintaining a rotund figure deserving of her station while stewards read her reports of defiance repaid with punishments. At least, Breyolt supposed, she had style, and that at least he could appreciate.

Yet for every formal execution, Breyolt carried out a hundred informal ones on the battlefield. For the ghastly services he provided Her Utmost he was known a war hero, the general to which she delegated that most delectable of tasks: slaughtering the unadulants. Like his father before him, Breyolt commanded and fought in campaigns against his own countrymen and those abroad. While Her Utmost owned all the world, strife still arose when someone, some noble or some guild of upstart merchants, thought for a moment that they could defy, fail, or purposefully misinterpret her orders. On parchment or from her very lips, she did not like to be disobeyed. The task of punishment through war fell on soldiers, but especially on Breyolt. Because of her imperious will and endless vanity, Breyolt and the army under his command fell on her own lands, vassal states, and cut them back in line. News of conquest and of the Queen’s decrees passed between the palace and the battlefield like blood through the veins of a great and ravenous beast.

“Your Grace!” A strained voice gasping for oxygen raised him. Breyolt turned in time to see the fat, elegantly dressed coyote raise an embroidered handkerchief to his brow. His ears flicked sweat and he hid his tongue in his mouth at the last moment. Behind him two servants crouched in their deference toward Breyolt. Breyolt had no rules of address, and thus answered in a tone most would find representative of his pleasant side.

“Speak, Rostoff.”

Lowering his head in a slight bow and bunching his double chin, the fat golden coyote rolled his hand back down over his belly, following the buttons to a pocket on his doublet and stuffing the handkerchief back into its place.

“Barring any overlong greetings, I wanted to congratulate Your Grace on the news. They say Greyeveldt was pacified in days. Only our Queen could have done better!”

“Ah, my thanks. Duty is everything.” Breyolt sneered and opened his mouth, but stopped silently with his smile and teeth and narrowed eyes. He examined how broadly the baron’s diameter blocked his view of the reddest roses in a patch of them and remembered a thinner man in his youth, who when Breyolt was a boy was thought to be dashing. “Your Aurelian Guard Corps looks fit as a sword from an Anulish forge. And you, Dorhyt, seem to have polished off a number of buttery and flaky enemies in my absence. I suppose in Aurelia that is a compliment, so I advise you to take it as such.” Breyolt’s truculence all but forced him to cross his arms in front of his broad chest and pretended to closely examine a bed of roses and vines twisting over a lattice.

Baron Rostoff, to his credit, seemed not to mind being ignored or having his recently increased weight pointed out.

“With respect, may I ask whether you plan to produce an excess of deference today during your audience with our Queen? I aim to be present.”

“I will deliver to her what she deserves,” Breyolt returned, and smiled toothily at the Baron, whose jowls shook. “On the occasion that I find myself enjoying the view – for her radiance is as storied as it is replete – perhaps I’ll stroke more than just my forehead on her floor.”

Rostoff nervously eyed Breyolt’s lips for assurances that he had indeed spoken so freely. Then his eyes dropped to the brownish red stains visible on the dark colors of Breyolt’s velvet jerkin. Breyolt returned his smile and the two imagined how he acquired them. Rostoff cleared his throat and replied.

“I assure you her radiance has grown since your last visit to the Palace Aurelia. As has her appetite for blood and inversely her patience with impertinence. But what can I say, Breyolt. Your father and I were good friends. Together with the Duc d’Aurléans we hunted four-leggeds at the Palais Renard every other winter. The reason I mention this is because I see in you every inch of your father, ah, give some stature. Your resistance to all the pleasures and glories he possessed is noble, for a priestess maybe, but I would hate to see you fall out of her favor as they say your father did. May She rest his soul.”

Breyolt gave a start and his tail popped up behind him in outrage. “You misspeak gravely. Dorhyt, oh if only wisdom truly came with age. You do not know it; perhaps you do not have cold Linalitian winters to spend reading, but there is ancient poetry which proclaims the very She to whom you pray eats souls like she does macarons. I am like my father, yes, thank you; he was a great man, and honorable to a fault. Remember though, Baron, and tell the other courtiers and sycophants, that I am Breyolt Selfridge, and I am not my father. I am free from the Queen’s influences, which make themselves known all about your belly and thighs. The smoky, blood-drenched breach has welcomed me in her arms more often than you have sat on the privy.” He turned and peered warningly into Rostoff’s green eyes briefly on his way across the pavement toward the palace. He could hear the baron scoff in reprobation behind him.

\--

“A pistol, Your Grace?” Lieutenant Schaffleigh puffed his cheeks out in thought, snorting his broad bovine nose as he examined the holster wherein Breyolt kept his flintlock greased and loaded. Releasing and looking up to Breyolt from bended waist, he asked, “and where, pray, is the gunpowder?”

Breyolt couldn’t help but grin, but his eyes failed to follow in sincerity. Schaffleigh, one of the younger men in his rank, was nonetheless endeared to Breyolt by circumstance. Breyolt’s dear friend Carmot had trained him more closely than others, and he imagined she felt some mentor-like impulses toward him. That made Breyolt his mentor’s mentor.

“During my intake into the palace, I understand that you must confiscate weapons, but listen closely now my boy, for this is a tool.” Breyolt patted the embroidered leather handle and grinned. “Mind that you don’t speak out of turn too often, this is made from your evolutionary holdovers, you know. Only a few steps between you and… ah, but I digress. I began wearing this as a tool. You see, war, and I know for a fact you haven’t seen it, has profound effects on the culture of the area. A river runs red and people start using their wells more often. The mature die and children take up their labors. But something also happens at home. In Linalita, more and more of my noble contemporaries, souls enthused to a conflagration by my victories abroad, began challenging me to duels. To defeat a war hero, well, suffice to say it’s a rather large feather in your cap, like one of those obnoxious peacock feathers that have been en vogue amongst the merchant class.”

Sensing a lull, the guardsman bull self-consciously polished one of his proud horns with a kerchief pulled from a belt pouch.

“Listening still, then? Good. After dispatching one count, two barons, and one knight, in no particular order, I began to fret that our nation would soon be out of nobles and the merchants, foreign transplants or otherwise, would rise up and turn the birthplace of the Queen’s army into a mercantile peddling pasties and frock buttons. That, and I found myself missing the time and effort spent dueling. This pistol, dishonorable though it may be, suitably ends such confrontations with alacrity. I shoot to wound, they fall, I go back to whatever I was doing.”

“And the gunpowder, Your Grace?”

“If I haven’t got a squire at hand with a horn, I simply perform the loading when I have a free moment. Understand, Schaffleigh: when news spreads that a corpse is cooling… never have I been challenged to two duels in one day. There’s a good man.” Breyolt added, patting the guard’s shoulder. “I’ll be seeing Her Utmost in a moment. Do wish me luck. I think I need my pistol now more than ever.”

Satisfied with having elicited a chuckle from the young man and with keeping his pistol, Breyolt moved past this first of the guards and ignored the rest.

As he strode into the entrance chamber, a foyer of enormous size with a passage of carpet over marble between two rows of decorated columns. On each column, talented artisans had crafted elaborate scenes of destruction, war, and conquest. The All-Queen, captured across each column, feasted on tables where the heads of dragons were served next to pastries. She watched as the rebels were consumed by the guillotine. Breyolt saw the likenesses of ancient kings and rulers whose names escaped him but whose stories easily came to memory. These stories were depicted along the columns in miniature so as to dishonor their statures while celebrating their deaths.

Among those carved into the column was the burning figure of King Ondoveria, whose kingdom was razed in a night for failing to adhere to the proper tariff rate. Lower were the three queens of the warring states, whose names, species, and countries were cast into ignominy and removed from history. The queens themselves were executed together, all at once. The armies of other, lesser known rulers were scorched and slaughtered en masse, instantly, by the All-Queen’s effortlessly wielded power. Or so it was carved. In no carving were the acts of her armies or generals depicted, not even on her behalf. No glory went to those who served her. Everything was dedicated to her. From behind the columns, grand frescoes painted in the classic style filled the walls to Breyolt’s left and right. They depicted her lying on her side amidst sybaritic finery the likes of which were only eclipsed by the reality of her balls, feasts, and festivities. Her eyes watched with such presence that Breyolt imagined each fresco thinking and feeling and silently judging his worth and utility.

The doors to the grand hall were open, and from within a din of conversation met Breyolt before he saw the full number of occupants. It took him three seconds and three darting movements of his eyes to count twenty courtiers, fifteen servants, and twelve guards, two of whom were posted at each doorway. Chattering and eating from trays in equal measure made up the majority of the events taking place. The smell of the food became cloying and heady as he passed through the crowds of courtiers, nearly all of them between portly and obese. Breyolt tended to despise the thickly sauced and overwrought creations of the royal kitchens. Others sought after the recipes and savored the food with appreciation that subsumed body and mind and impaired judgment. Like overfed pets the gathered nobles dined on the banquets laid out at all hours, stopping only to gossip or self-aggrandize. Their faces and colors, coats and crests were vaguely discernable, but it was not them Breyolt came to see. He had but one task and it concerned only the throne room at the top of the stairs.

As he ascended the stairs, his hand drifting along the golden banister, his own name drifted upward from the hall. No one had failed to see him, and it was likely they would follow along to be present for the audience with the Queen. The doors ahead of him flew open the moment he stepped upon the landing. Inside he was blinded by the glittering opulence of the throne room. Grand chandeliers spun waves of warm orange and yellow light into innumerable polished silver mirrors. Decorative carvings upon the walls separated great glass windows framed in gold and white. All this was pleasing to the eye, if not overly so as in the manner of excessive physical pleasures collecting their toll on the body.  Breyolt had forgotten the degree to which the Queen’s ostentatious displays conflicted with the austerity of his ducal palace, but given what he knew of her personality, he was not surprised.

There were few things the Queen liked more than tales of Breyolt’s conquests and victories, tales of which he possessed many. Perched on her wide throne of purple cushions, pillows, and golden frame, she beheld Breyolt from the top of a dais of four steps, one for each dimension of space and time mere mortals could comprehend and that she surmounted. Her beauty, peerless, radiated throughout the room, the grandest jewel she owned and which shone the brightest.

Breyolt approached and bent his knee. The courtiers, chamberlains and servants in audience bowed their heads to await the Queen’s address. Having found a particularly delicious petit four among the various trays in her reach, she decided she was in no particular hurry to break their tension.

Her Illustrious Utmost, All-Queen Aurelina was a pudgy, spoiled lupine. The oiled and perfumed softness of her dark grey coat sat under layers of pink and claret garments, quilted and soft, made of fabrics no mortal was allowed to wear. Her pointed ears and lupine snout affected the appearance of unearthly grace for her species. Her features alone begged the question of her origin. As she sat, she rotated her fingers in her necklace of pearls, just above a necklace of gold and jewels that rested in her chins and décolletage.  Atop her candyfloss-colored hair, not one strand of which lay unruly, sat her elegant golden crown beset with jewels and an enormous rhodolite. After a long wait and a few sips of priceless dessert wine she shifted, her thighs and rump smothering more pillows and her snout raising imperiously while her eyes cast downward.

“We have long pined for your presence.” She called down to him, and he lowered his head. He stared at the floor while she savored him on one knee, knowing he could not say a word out of turn. "Now then," She smiled and moved her legs, clothed in form-displaying knitted stockings. “We are pleased to announce the attendance to Our palace the venerable Breyolt Selfridge, Duke of Linalita. In Our glorious name do we allow him now to speak." Hearing the name of his homeland on her lips, plump and glistening in a pink the shade of outrage, reminded him instantly of the freezing peaks and icy tundra. “Lift the snout.”

Breyolt may have been a celebrated war hero. He may have been second only to the woman sitting before him. But his cavalier attitude toward others had to metamorphize into courtesy and deference in a fashion to which he could never fully acclimate. Even his clothing chafed in his genuflecting position. He lifted head to light applause from the gathered nobles and much bowing from all but Her. It was the Duke they welcomed, but they were all looking at Her, those disgusting, hedonistic nobles whose decadence pushed them nearer to irrelevancy They practically lived in her palace, lapped at her honeyed words, and fattened themselves on her riches. Breyolt detested them simply, as a matter-of-fact. They were in a class of people he could barely stand.

When Breyolt looked into the Queen’s eyes he recalled one of the many fairytales about her:

The Wolf in The Chair concerned mainly the punishment of a foolish child, sent into a world of talking four-leggeds and trees that bore pastries as fruit. Along the path the child met a beautiful noblewoman traveling in a carriage, her long snout poking just through heavy curtains of silk and velvet. ‘Little girl, come to my manor, and bring with you the memories of your loved ones that I might return them to you. Lost little girl. Just follow the tracks of my carriage.’ Traveling through a dark and horrifying night, the girl arrives at a manor that shames the surrounding forest with its decorative finery. She is ushered in by a man with a sword, the cutsman, an ox who doesn’t speak. There in the dining room she is welcomed to the sight of her parents and relatives’ heads on silver platters, cut by the cutsman. The rich woman is there, a beautiful canid creature, her fur matted with blood. Her words to the girl as the story ends: ‘No world, no figure, no memory is free from my appetite.’ And Breyolt remembered the description of her ‘jaws going smacker-slap.’

His fear of her made him waver in all things. Who was he if he was afraid of a plump, spoiled woman? He knew the nature of his loyalty; his family going back generations had served her. His father had sung her praises in the voice of one who has licked the spittle so often they have grown fat from it. He was loyal to her, but he was also obsessed with her. Her eyes struck him with awe. Her lashes, naturally long, were glittering starry skies of mascara and somber purple shadow resting on her dainty lids. Within her eyes gleamed a fierce and vibrant pink as if all the roses in her garden had been crushed for one unprecedented drop of hue. In that moment he knew he served her because he loved her. Yet still something else remained in his unrequited heart. Something else he felt when he looked at her. Love and hate had transmuted into a hybrid. What he wanted was not to please her or brighten her days. To serve and slave for her. No, Breyolt wanted to own her. He wanted her in chains, and his boot on her neck. His teeth on her throat.

It struck him that if she knew everything, why did she not read his mind when he had such thoughts? Why did she not have him murdered when, in those long nights in his officer’s tent on the field of war, he fantasized about all the things he would do to her if he were King? She must have known, mustn’t she?

Could it be, and he found himself slavering, could it be that she was fallible?

“Speak.” Aurelina suddenly demanded.

And so, he did, “Your wise commission has brought an end to the upstarts who thought to slack in labor and who imagined that for a moment they might lick a morsel of your sugar.” His throat rumbled, his voice resolute. “Their blood fed the soil and Your Utmost may be assured when next occupied the lands will flood with their tributes. If it would please Your Utmost, I am possessed of a great many tales and of a need to tell them.” Breyolt watched with exhilaration as his Queen’s smile grew with his every word, “My sword slit many open, and my pistol struck true with hellfire’s roar. Some soldiers are so well-fed on the spoils that there was a need to expedite a number of additional carts and teams of horses to roll and pull them home. I personally lapped and bathed in the blood from the bones of their councils and guild masters.”

 “Why, my good Duke,” she cooed, oddly sweet, “You proffer such success that we will erase poverty and hunger entirely. And then who will labor?” A bloated, dread pause filled the room. The All-Queen defused it with a mocking peal of laughter. “We shall see to it that you all act with less fear and more eager obeisance.”

Breyolt stared unblinking as she carried on. He wanted to bite her pretty neck; to show her who he really was. He would gladly trade all the nights spent with whores, courtesans, merchant-ladies, generals, and noblewomen for one night with her. His loins longed for her. They longed to know her body as none other ever had. Never once in all his service had she touched him. She was guarded in her affections and in tales of her history referred to as the Virgin Queen. He surmised it was not a question of her purity, but of her sacrosanct forbidden form. The apex of his desire would be to dethrone her, depose her, and replace her. He would be God-King and his reign would be so much bloodier than this woman’s ever could. His thoughts raced, and he was not struck down. It was said she could not conceive of things she did not put into motion herself. It was theorized that through her reading of minds and affecting of wills, all things and all people were her toys. But Breyolt did not feel like a toy as he thought selfishly of her body.

Aurelina continued blithely, “We offer Our pleasure for your safe return to Our Queendom. However, in spite of protocol, We will not require your further oaths and offerings of your exploits… you may return to Linalita at once, unless you find Our court to be of interest to you. But, We warn you thus: should you stay, doubtless will it affect your warmonger’s physique. We predict you shall more closely resemble the girth of Our court sorcerer. You may lose it all: your tight trunk, your sinewy arms and legs, your…” She stopped herself, her words drifting off. Her eyes drew away from Breyolt rather more quickly than he was used to seeing.

 _Now or never,_ Breyolt thought. He felt his lips part in a grin and knew his gleaming teeth were visible throughout the room even if all the mirrors were expertly positioned to reflect the throne to its occupant. He stood boldly and puffed out his chest. For a testing moment he stood. He could hear only his breath coming firmly through his cold black nose. Nothing transpired, and spurred into giddy action by this, he trotted up to the Queen’s dais and climbed its four steps. He saw her eyes snap back to him as he did. his greaves clanking. On his chest thumped his medal, which depicted the Queen in profile. To screams of warning, to guards with brandished guisarmes and halberds, he approached her throne and placed one hand on each of the arms, spreading them wide to reach and noting briefly in his mind how it seemed fit for an even larger rump. He leaned over her, breathing and staring and smelling her perfumed aura and the hints of pomegranate and phlox. After the slightest hint of interest or anxiety she let her paw fall to a tray of delicate square chocolates and casually placed one of them in her mouth without moving her eyes from Breyolt’s.

“I simply needed to tell you,” Breyolt said, his risen lips inching toward a toothy sneer, his gruff tones audible only to her, “that I love you.” So close to her, he mused whether to hazard a kiss. He supposed proudly that it would be her first. But with so many blades so near his neck, he decided himself satisfied. He pushed himself off her throne with aplomb and a renewed, singular vigor, casting his eyes briefly at her guards as if to order them while she sat silent. He turned his backside to her and trotted jauntily down the dais steps, further alarming all attending the court. She watched it leave, his tail flagging this way and that in an excited, dominant position. Just minutes ago, as he knelt on the floor it had been unmistakably submissive. He supposed he would stay at the palace; he had to survey it and its occupants if he was to own it and rule them.


	2. A Sorceror's Envy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For picture references of the principle characters, please consult the links below:
> 
> Lucius: [Here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbZ3bimU8AAe18a.jpg) and [here](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbZ3dLCU8AE6Fbp.jpg)

Breyolt’s thumb and forefinger stroked over the base of his cock, the knot throbbing with a desperate sort of arousal that came from days of holding back. He sat in one of the palace apartments, halfway submerged in a wide, porcelain soaking tub. Groaning, he pressed his cock back against his abs, his eyes seeking the ceiling. There he found thoughts of her breasts, drenched in necklaces of pearls and gold, stuffed quite tightly into her undersized bodice of royal color, with the ruffled organza partlet hiding some of her cleavage like a noblewoman might hide behind a fan.

Images of the All-Queen looked down on him from the ceiling and on moulded panels around the walls. She was emerging from the waters of the Sea of Lia with her shoulders draped in silks with ample forms visible beneath. They were there as if to assist his depravity, and he studied them greedily though he considered them pale imitations. His thoughts and fantasies of her didn’t need to persist long. He had stroked himself indolently in the hot waters for some time, speeding up now as he replayed the recent events, concentrating on how powerful he felt, and how close he came to her. Indeed, he came, his toes curling at the end of the tub, and spread his arms out on the rim. He leaned back just in time to see through the steam a slender fox servant standing over him at the entrance to the washroom. His ears swiveled quickly.

“Your Grace,” he began, clearly not understanding his transgression, “your presence is humbly requested by His Excellency the Court Sorcerer, Lucius Hargrave.”

Breyolt scoffed derisively, not even looking at the servant. “You ruined my afterglow to conjure images of that calumnious crocodile? Are you mad, man?” He grumbled, adding, “That pompous cremepuff doesn’t do anything humbly. Blast your careful artifice, can I not have some privacy in this place? Look, now, the candles are dripping into the bath.” Hurriedly he began to blow them out.

The servant’s shoulders drew into his neck. “Ah, he, is, a, uh, dragon, Your Grace.”

“And I,” Breyolt announced, standing up quite dramatically, still at half mast and his sculpted nakedness plainly visible; the servant immediately averted his eyes, “am a wolf of little patience.” He held out his arm and received a towel, which he wrapped around his waist. “Call the tailor; my last suit smells like a headsman’s hood, it’s been stained in so much blood.” Trotting over to the four-poster bed in rosewood and cashmere, he procured a bottle of wine from a side table, ripped the cork off with his teeth, and poured himself a glass. “And tell that mystical idiot to expect me after lunch.”

The servant nodded low and did not raise his head before he scurried out of the room like a fearful rat. Minutes later the tailor arrived, a hedgehog whose quills sat like swords on her back around and over her self-made garments of silk and taffeta. Her portly belly strained her corset and sagged over her skirt. Peering over tiny octagonal glasses, she beheld Breyolt. She was surprised, but not shocked, to see the wolf, dry, naked, a soaked towel on the floor, and a half glass of wine in his hand. Though he was a hair’s breadth away from his forties, he had the physique of a lifelong gladiator and barely an ounce of fat on him.

“Aranella, it’s about time. New suit, like the old one. Before lunch.” He quaffed the remainder of the wine and tossed the empty glass on the elegant bedsheets. Then he spread his arms wide, paws facing the floor.

“Well,” Aranella observed of his sword, “at least it’s in your sheath this time.”

The tailor clucked her tongue as she unfurled a measure from a gipser resting upon her generous hip. Holding it to the length of Breyolt’s arms, she took notes mentally where lesser tailors might need a sheet of vellum and an inkwell. “The seamstresses,” she reminded, “are quite busy with the adjustments to the garments of the other nobles. It may take some time. It has been a productive week celebrating your victories, and, well, most of them have put on another twenty pounds at least.”

“Yourself included, you old pincushion?” Breyolt chortled, swishing his tail carelessly.

Blushing, Aranella moved to measure his chest, then his waist, and muttered, “Not quite twenty, no.”

“Oh?”

“Twenty two.”

Fighting his urge to guffaw, Breyolt nodded knowingly. “I thought you had lost that spring in your step. My but your job will be difficult if you grow too large – and then what will She say?”

Aranella pulled the measure taut and knelt to ascertain the length of his legs. “Nothing, I hope. I have been doing this a long time, Your Grace; I remember when you were a younger man not yet an inimitable alpha. I have many a talented seamstress who would be happy to replace my duties should I become… indolent. Her fingers danced down the length of the measure and enclosed it in a circle, completely blasé about measuring his inseam. “Besides, Your Grace, Her Utmost adores me. I designed her current garments, you know. She refused to wear a skirt, how like her, as she found it to be absurd and restricting for daily wear.”

“Oh yes,” Breyolt grunted as her hand brushed aside his scrotum as one might a fruit, ripe but unwanted on the vine, “I must thank you for that. Her Utmost’s garments. The way her thighs, outlined from crotch to knee, look like plums for the harvest…” He trailed off. The tape measure was rather tight around his thigh. He knew not to flex, but to relax. He stared out the window as Aranella worked, narrowing his eyes to see the bloated parade of nobles walking the gardens and stuffing themselves with teacakes at every turn.

“I was not there, but I heard you made quite a display at your audience with Her Utmost, is that so?” Aranella asked in a dry tone, her curious nature always revealed subtly in nonchalant commentary with her clients.

Breyolt exhaled sharply. “My word, all you people do here at the palace when your mouths aren’t full is gossip. In Linalita we speak with steel and are too busy shoveling snow to shovel food into our mouths at the rate these capitolites do.”

Aranella stood up and smiled knowingly. “In twenty long years of measuring your body I have never received an answer more deflecting. You are like armor, and all inquiries but glancing blows.” Her gentle admonishment broke off into a chuckle.

“I merely told her what we all think!” He raised his voice in defense, tensing. “I told her that I love her. All you lot love her. At least in words. However much she is hated in thought is not my concern.”

Aranella rolled the measure into a tight cylinder and gently placed it into her satchel. She put her paws on his arms and lowered them to his sides as a sign that he could relax. He did, and paced away from her toward his bed, where he sat and ran his hand over the plush sheets. “Is she hated much?” He asked finally, before Aranella left.

“I know as well as you that most hate her more than they love her. Demanding adherence to her decrees on threat of death has that effect. What did you mean when you told her that?” She couldn’t help but ask, her hand on the silver doorhandle.

Breyolt paused for a long time, and Aranella thought he might not answer.

“I meant that I wanted her. That my love precludes my hate, which is endless, and that she should be so lucky as to be loved by me, her faithful slaughterer.”

Aranella inclined her head toward him. “I trust that she knows this all too well.”

\--

Breyolt was fitted into his quilted gambeson before lunch, the vertical lines accentuating his tall, powerful figure. His pointed mahewter and collar, as well as his greaves and boots, were all the same deep crimson color he so liked. The black undersleeves and trousers were devoid of extra ornamentation, fitting his austere upbringing and the hallmarks of the north. He left his sword in its scabbard next to the bed, his other sword in its codpiece, and exited his apartments with his flintlock pistol on his hip in a handsome holster.

One could walk for hours around the palace. Breyolt knew it well, for he had spent a great deal of time as a young man in its halls. His years as the primary vassal representing the Duchy of Linalita numbered six; ever since his father died during an insurrection. The old wolf had been too fat to leave his bed easily and met his end at the hand of a dozen or so lesser nobles who had plotted against him. Their motives were related, as most motives were, to worship. From her palace, Aurelina delegated worship tasks to the vassal states surrounding her Queendom. There were the priestesses of the Order Divinum, historians who chronicled the Queen’s sacred history. Then there were poets, singers, all with unique methods of worship. Linalita’s worship was through war. Breyolt’s father was accused of heresy. Linalita was the primary supply of soldiers, gladiators, and guards for the whole planet. His father had grown far too fat to effectively march into war despite contesting reports that he was able to slaughter entire villages worth of dissidents with a morningstar the size of one’s head well beyond his five hundredth pound – all while wearing a full suit of armor.

Aurelina had not responded to the Duchy’s requests for arbitration. She instead sent a bouquet of red roses from her gardens and a note written with unmatched calligraphy congratulating Breyolt on his ascension to the ducal throne. Breyolt remembered feeling the hardened wax where her signet ring had been pressed into the wax seal he had carefully removed from the letter. An image of her in profile, the same image he now wore emblazoned on the gleaming medal resting on his chest, strung upon his golden necklace.

It thumped on his chest as he rounded a corner in the inner east wing, passing a pair of tittering ewe maids in black and white dress. They averted their eyes from the wolf as if not to draw his attention, though he could feel their gaze on his back. He imagined he could get a romp or three out of them, but another woman was on his mind, and he tended to be rather dismissive when he was preoccupied. Besides, coitus from chattel was so easily obtained he didn’t consider it worth taking.

The parquet floors clicked under his greaves, the chandeliers over his head glowing like deep sea creatures even in the midday sun. He ran his hand through the thick fur of his broad neck, adjusting the necklace around his shoulders, and glanced up at the portraits of Aurelina all throughout the hallway. They say across from arcaded windows such that shone light on each of them. Her beauty was ravishingly captured by painters from all over the Queendom. They captured her at various angles, her fur like gorgeous black oceans. She was posed, often with her muzzle raised and her eyes cast off canvas. On those rare occasions when her eyes looked at the viewer, they unsettled the stomach with their piercing acuity. Some people in the palace couldn’t look at them. Breyolt enjoyed doing so.

A profound stench struck Breyolt’s sensitive nose as he turned into another hallway branching off the main, where several doors lead to ever more complex layouts of apartments, sitting rooms, galleries, and, of course, kitchens. The smell of incense greeted him as he knocked firmly on the door leading to the apartments of the Court Sorcerer. Without delay the door swung open, pulled from across the room by the sorcerer himself, Lucius Hargrave.

The dragon, who was once slender and graceful, had been raised by an enchantress and a soldier. His upbringing had not been noble, but he had fit in the court all he same. Like many other courtiers, he was rounded. His buttoned pantaloons, jackets and belts were replaced with ever-enlarging sizes by the seamstresses whose purpose in life was to keep the nobility and courtiers clothed in opulent finery that bordered on ostentatious. The sorcerer was a rare creature even in the royal court, possessing smooth grey skin. Between red horns resembling a bull’s sat his long, carefully combed grey hair.

Lucius had not turned from his desk of beakers of bubbling alembics, his eyes following the trails of glowing liquids through condenser tubes, his breathing heavy. He dabbed his mouth on his white cravat as soon as he finished pushing a slice of pistachio cake into his lips. He remained stationary as Breyolt approached, eying the walls of curio cabinets that extended to the ceiling and were filled with a great many things considered ghastly by the weaker willed populace: bones, skulls, pickled creatures and stones with odd colors and stratum. A forest of birch-white incense trails ascended from all around the room, birthed in brass and gold sculptures designed for such a purpose. In contrast to the halls outside, these rooms were dark and tasted of opium.

“Your Grace,” Lucius spat, denying him even the honor of facing him. He waited excitedly for a rivulet of glowing red liquid to descend and drop into a blue solution collecting in a flask suspended over a flame. As it did, the mixture swirled and bubbled and turned purple. He grabbed the flask and quaffed it before the mixture cooled, his chins bobbing as he swallowed. “Ah, a kinder draught I’ve rarely slurped.” Lucius snarled happily, his whiskers twitching as he set the flask down and turned to face Breyolt. Several steps away, the wolf had folded his arms impatiently.

“You are late, as you often are to any presence but Hers.” Lucius rumbled, waving his hand and welcoming a thin pipe into it. It had floated over from a holder decorated with amethyst and silver filigree that was sitting on a shelf, ten feet away. The bowl of the pipe glowed green and Lucius puffed eagerly at it as he swung his ponderous girth around toward a wide chaise couch covered in damask silk blankets and pillows.

Breyolt’s upper lip curled slightly as he waited for the dragon to settle after he flopped himself onto the chaise and puffed on his pipe several times.

“You have my presence,” Breyolt scathed, “now have me a reason or I’ll turn and leave. I don’t have time to watch you eat, you simpering slob. Be careful you don’t bite your fingers off - are those not important for your esoteric little hand gestures? That She humbles to the point of uselessness with less than a thought?”

Lucius sneered recalcitrantly. He knew the Duke was by all accounts his superior, and yet the favor he curried with Her Utmost seemed to give him a feeling of safety at displaying his vanity and impertinence, qualities which she well liked. This gave him cause to take his time and display a casual rudeness which many would not have dared show the Duke.

“Her Utmost quite adores my company, for my wisdom and my wit. Why she keeps you on constant work abroad is obvious,” came the dragon’s retort, and, before Breyolt could reply, “now listen carefully. I want to talk about the last audience you had with Her Utmost. The entire palace talks of it. How… How did you do it? How did you break protocol so definitely and escape unscathed? However did you find it in yourself to speak to her that way, and did she say anything back to you? What happened up on that dais?”

Breyolt grinned ominously, turning away from Lucius to examine a shelf of curious objects ranging from crystallized wood to insects pinned in display boxes. He took his time.

“Well?” Lucius huffed, taking another puff off his pipe. He ran a claw up one of his reddish horns and smoothed his long silver hair. Once many women, and some men, had sought to be his suitors, before his indefatigable self-love became more apparent.

“You have a bull’s horns, and a bull’s head, it would seem.” Breyolt said casually. “Why do you want to know? Fattening your gossipper’s purse so you have a few more precious hearsays to deposit into the ears of your apprentices? To impress them where your magical art cannot?”

Lucius waved his hand in a circle, and from a side table a cup of tea and several over-buttered biscuits floated toward him. He sipped at the steaming tea and snapped up the biscuits like a trap devoured mice.

“Now who is being reticent with their responses?” Breyolt teased.

“Oh, sod off. You’re a fool, puffing out your chest like that. Her Utmost enjoys our decadence. It shows how we appreciate the prosperity of her enlightened rule. You are the bauble, and I am the beau. She loves me! She applauds my displays of arcane prowess!” He paused to eat, drink, and smoke, his three favorite vices. “I doubt anything happened at all. That is why you guard your experience so. I shall tell the maids and the ladies that she snorted in your face. That she despises you, which, to me, is obvious.”

Breyolt was silent, then turned back to Lucius with a broad smile. “Tell me, Lucius. There was a time you performed daily for her Utmost. As you have become, ah, absorbed in your studies, your time in the court has dropped off. Here you are in your apartments guzzling elixirs and smoking flowers, far away from her. Does she ever come here, Lucius? Can she suffer your biting odors and your sour incense? Or have you outlived and outeaten your usefulness, a grinning fool in a golden cage, unaware you’re heading for your beheading faster than you’re heading for her loins?”

Lucius roared with a start, struggling to raise himself up to seem intimidating. Every flame in the room leapt. But Lucius did not stand, he did not even sit up for long.

“No cock as cold as yours could warm her insides, you Northern icicle!” Lucius hissed. “My magic is the glory of the court! She and her ladies in waiting adore my spectacles of roaring flames, swirling in light and color, of electricity, of flowers and feathers bursting from the air, creating such patterns that the artists choking these halls with her portraits writhe with jealousy!”

Breyolt’s eyebrows arched comically and a smile crept into his features.  “You betray your doubts. You are her jester, nothing more. She produces more magic in a fart than you have in your entire life.”

“Are you going to answer my question or not? I tire of this! Answer me!” Lucius demanded, and Breyolt strolled around the room, running his claws along a dusty table and peering at the alchemical equipment.

“Distilling a tincture against senility, Lucius? Or should I say impotence?”

Lucius tugged at the sides of his long jacket, barely covering his belly, “That elixir was the product of weeks of work. I had discovered a flower far to the west that produces a sort of trance. A drug used by the people there. Some nothing little principality. These trances have been shown to give way to magical mishaps, cantrips occurring without being cast, that sort. With them I have crushed precious stones innumerable, known for their channeling abilities, and—”

“Spare me the pseudoscience.”

“It is a catalyst. A liquid philosopher’s stone. With its imbibement I shall multiply my magical abilities both latent and attained. I grow ever closer to her magnificent…”

“You grow ever closer as to a flame does a moth.” Breyolt spat, irritated and annoyed. “Your blathering is tiresome. Here is the gossip you desire: I told her I loved her. She said nothing. But to stand over her and deliver the words, to feel myself above her… I thrill to recall it.”

Lucius was quiet, pensive, weighing with skepticism the claims the Duke made so brazenly.

“She loves no one.” He sighed. “You fool. You amuse her, nothing more. She makes infinity seem as one. This is not her only Queendom, not her only time and place. So has she told me. To think her interested in us beyond the interest a predator takes in its prey is to err. I have accepted this.” He hadn’t. “Why have you not?”

Breyolt made a fist, and with his other hand gestured passionately. “She is capable of love! She must! She exudes it, have you seen her eyes? She craves it!”

“There are no known records discussing her in that fashion. Never has Her Utmost, in as long as there has been recorded text, bedded anyone. She is our Virgin Queen.” Lucius peered over his overstuffed middle, finishing the last of his tea while his eyes, yellow with fearsome red slits, narrowed, staring at Breyolt over the edge of the cup.

“I do not care,” Breyolt sneered, “what she wants. I care what I want. And I want her. I want her! And why does she not strike me down for saying so? Why do I not feel her wrath for my insolence? Because she wants me!”

Lucius rotated his claws and produced a crackling sphere. “She wants you like she wants a pastry. You are nothing to her. But if she will not strike you down, perhaps I could…”

Breyolt patted his hip, avoiding even glancing at the dragon. “This pistol was a gift from her, made by her gunsmiths. Highly refined meteorite steel, freshly-oiled, and designed to slide out of its holster as easily as one tears out a throat. Go on then, wizard. Make my epoch.”

Lucius sensed Breyolt’s ardor, dedicated not to honor but to violence itself. This was a man who killed for sport. Lucius killed only for convenience.

“Fine.” Lucius let the ball dissipate and grumpily shifted his enormity. “But if you want to live much longer I recommend you see her as soon as possible. Beg her to spare you. At best I can see you being forced back to Linalita, that icy hellscape. Remember well that I live in the light of her presence, titillating her ladies in waiting and stunning the rest. They laud me, they love me. If she can love, she loves me far more than she could ever you.”

Breyolt turned and looked as if he were initiating a bow, but merely bent himself at the waist enough to bring his gleaming teeth to the yellowed razors in the dragon’s mouth. He puffed air through his nose at the dragon callously.

"I shall make her love me.”


	3. The Camarilla

The men and women who had historically made up Aurelina’s camarilla were, to a one, scheming, cruel creatures choking on their own vanity. Breyolt had hated every one of them, hated the way they struggled to please Her Utmost, gleefully stabbing each other in the back even when it was completely pointless to do so. He did his damndest not to become one of them, not to draw too close to the Queen. She must have known their innermost thoughts, their pasts and futures, and all the choices they could make. Why then, Breyolt wondered, did they still gossip and preen? Was it because She wanted them to debase themselves for her amusement?

All this swirled in Breyolt’s mind as he made his way from Lucius’ chambers to the apartments of Aurelina, all the way in the back of the palace, furthest from the entrance and altogether inconveniently opulent. Benches of gold and royal red lined the parquet floors in halls that shone with the brilliance of magical lights in sconces shaped like the snouts of various predators. As he neared the entryway to Aurelina’s apartments, the number of stocky armed guards in full plate mail increased. Their species could not be easily discerned other than by smell, and a great number of them were predators.

Breyolt was not deterred, as he had been through this dozens of times, and knew that for someone like him, the guards did not exist. Lesser nobles seeking favor and obnoxious merchants begging for tax relief would have been slaughtered in the halls, but the Duke was untouchable. The doors to the inner chambers were closed, but Breyolt shoved them open and entered as casually as he might a tavern. The anteroom was empty, the statues and paintings that decorated the large hall staring at him with more vitality than any artwork should.

“If you are looking for Her Utmost, Your Grace…” One of her chambermaids approached him with a stern expression. “…I am afraid you will have to return later. She is bathing.”

For a moment, Breyolt was completely blind to the pretty young doe of diminutive height and plain dress standing before him. He was not forced to imagine the All-Queen bathing, naked, wet, but he could do naught else. The thought of her elegant candy-pink hair flowing in a river of sensuality down her naked back, her dark grey fur, her breasts and her wide, shapely rump finally revealed to him. What would she be eating, he wondered, as she bathed? Lady fingers? Macarons? No, no, something that didn’t turn into mush when wet…

“Your Grace?”

“What is your name, young lady?” Breyolt craned his head down to peer at the tan-orange fur about the deer and her large green eyes sticking out from under her cap.

The chambermaid narrowed her eyes. “Mindt. And, with respect, I love my job more than anything. More than handsome and powerful men, should they try and deter me from it.”

Breyolt grinned. “Well then I hope you never meet any to test that resolve.”

As if to relieve the tension, a russet-red vixen in a yellow dress made herself known with a light giggle behind a fan. She had appeared from a far door, having had to turn sideways to fit through it. As was the style, her dress lacked bustle or a shaping crinoline; her buxom figure, provided all the necessary bulging and rounding of her skirts and the ribbons thereupon. One delicate, gloved hand was steadying her vertical hairstyle as she approached. The sculpture was the color of honey.

“My _dear_ Duke Selfridge!” She squealed, licking something from her lips. “You’re not accosting this little one, are you?” Mindt winced as the vixen pinched her cheek. “She’s doing what she does best! Keeping _rapscallions_ like you away from Her Utmost when she needs some peace and quiet!”

The Duke had already rolled his eyes with as much subterfuge as he could when Glottina DuParlesse helped herself to the conversation like it was dessert.

“By Her Beauty, look what you’ve done to yourself, Glottie!” Breyolt cried as the vixen threw her arms around him and squeezed him against her full, bodice-stretching bosom and belly. The feigned smile on his face dropped the second they were cheek to cheek and she couldn’t see it. When she pulled away he smiled again.

“By Her Beauty indeed, good Breyolt, Her Beauty and favor! When we last met I imagine it must have been…”

Breyolt glanced to Mindt and back. “You looked more like her than—”

“Why, yes!” She laughed, a graceful soprano like a singing flute. “You wrapped your arms around my waist, and you did so often! And if you recall those nights in the Owl’s Claws! The best inn across the capitol and you had me screaming on the veranda! Remember when the innkeeper threatened to throw us off it?”

Breyolt flushed, grabbing Glottina’s wrist and pulling her away from Mindt, whom he sent away with an anxious glance.

“Must you, Glottie?”

“But I must! Any Countess would be a fool not to sing of her dalliances with Breyolt Selfridge. You know, several of your paramours and I have been comparing notes, and—”

“Glottie!” Breyolt could hear the guards chortling outside. “I’m here for Her Utmost; is she available?”

Glottie unfurled her fan with an easy motion and let out an ugly cackle behind it. “No, Breyolt, no. Mindt told you she is bathing, did she not? As Grand Chamberlain I must insist you return later.”

“When?” Breyolt asked, glancing toward the other doors, all closed and likely locked. Then his eyes caught, next to her feet of cleavage, a speck of black resting on the snow white of the vixen’s breasts. A crumb of cake, or an invitational beauty mark? He pondered the options deeply, trying to remember if she had ever had a beauty mark there.

Glottie took Breyolt’s hand and pulled him closer to her, tilting her head up to sniff at his neck, inhaling his alpha’s scent.

“As intoxicating as ever…” She breathed, then let him pull away. “Tomorrow. Or another day. It is perhaps surprising to you that she does not wish to be seen for some time? Perhaps she tires of us – well, not me – and seeks respite. You must know how busy her work keeps her.” Her eyes danced over Breyolt’s body, and he was sure he could sense her white tail tip swishing daintily with her interest.

“Work?” Breyolt jeered. “She sits on a throne and barks orders. Speaking of work, doesn’t your dedication decadence disrupt yours? Signing her documents and serving her meals? Overseeing her levee? In that dress you look like a balloon covered in fondant.”

At his last comment, Glottina blushed feverishly and fought a grin. “No difficulties, my dear! My sweet little chambermaids are well-suited to the tasks. Mindt, whom you met, is my chief underling. I barely have to lift a finger for Her Utmost, and that is just how she likes it I assure you! She has paid me many such compliments on my figure.”

Breyolt grumbled, seeing easily in her behavior the woman he once knew. Her mannerisms had always been larger than life. He supposed it was fitting that she was so happy, so cared for, even if he struggled to imagine how she could be so joyful in this awful place. She did excite him, obviously, but she also exhausted him. Furthermore, since returning he only had eyes for Aurelina, whose beauty, somehow, had increased vastly despite her every feature remaining the same as it had always been.

“I’m feeling ever so peckish, dear Breyolt. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. Her Utmost is not accepting visitors. Not even you. This is your first time back in the palace in how many years?”

“Three, Glottie.”

“Three long years! Exactly my point. Go and say hello to Baron Rostoff, I think he’s out in the gardens with Lady Holsdt. High tea, you know.”

“Lunch was only an hour ago.”

“Yes, well we take many such snacks and teas around here you simply must brace yourself to put on some weight. Even you cannot live in the palace unscathed.” Tittering, she prodded his tight middle with her folded fan. “As much of a shame that would be. But I daresay you would look equally handsome with an ounce of softness on you. A good man wears his weight well. You would wear it like a king.”

Breyolt sought the compliment in her words and grinned despite himself. “I wear everything like a king.” He seized her slender hand and kissed it before he turned to leave, calling over his shoulder, “Goodbye, Glottie. Say hello to the cheesecake for me.”

\--

Breyolt despised the gardens. The way the others used them as playgrounds for their debauched fancies, how they, roaring with laughter behind hedges studded with red roses, drank and feasted and festivaled each day away. The Duke respected hard work, and though he was not entirely alien to the diversions of the court, nor did they ever surprise him, he hated the camarilla the last time he was at court. It made things difficult when, as years went on, many of the respected members of Aurelina’s inner circle were executed for coup attempts or simply died and were replaced by women with whom Breyolt had been intimate. These were women he was unable to hate, try as he might.

Glottina, Orlei, Carmot, and Llerandie were the four whom he was presently aware of being inner circle members and whom he had also slept with. Glottie, five years ago. Ori, ten. Carmot, ten. And Llerandie he hadn’t had the pleasure of bedding since he was twenty and still in military training in Cvaravald Keep. At the time, she had been fresh and carefree. He adored lifting her off her feet and throw her into bed. He had held her springbok’s horns and traced the dark patches on her pelt like he was curating an exhibit. All while plowing her, of course.

He could already hear them carrying on as he walked beneath the trellises of roses and chrysanthemums. He walked on perfectly apportioned stones of iridescent granite. He walked until he paused, certain they hadn’t yet heard him. But he could hear them.

“-four times and she didn’t even look at me!” The voice of Baron Rostoff, overdramatic, while some women laughed.

“Perhaps,” Orlei Holdst spoke in her somber tones, “she saw the Duke once and it was all she needed of men to keep her going for a lifetime.”

More laughter. Indulgent. False, but overly so.

“Ori, dear, if you want to pay him your respects, you can do it on your knees in his bedchambers.”

“Would that I could do such things! I would have paid him a visit already, but I doubt he’s interested learning how to please a woman like me again.”

“I could certainly teach him.” Breyolt could recognize Llerandie’s voice in a crowd of a hundred; how sweet it sounded. “I taught him most of what he knows, unless he’s been studying by bedding the corpses of the enemies he slaughters!”

Breyolt strolled around the hedge and into the enclosure of high bushes. It was a Bacchanalia of trays, platters, carts and tables made of beautiful white metal. Every surface was covered in pots of tea, cakes and sandwiches. On bench after reinforced, padded bench, the nobles of the camarilla sat while servants who may as well not have had names, faces, or species, bustled around busily refilling teacups and plates.

“Llera, my heart bursts. How very withering.” He spoke with open arms and hands. “Though my forgotten lovers outnumber the thorns in this garden, I had hoped you would remember me as fondly as I remember you.”

On his left, Baron Dorhyt Rostoff, the dashing coyote whose rotund figure, did not soften his conniving orange eyes or knife blade ears. The extent of his military training, too, was visible in the officer’s sword he had hanging on his belt like a toothpick, and Breyolt imagined he now used it exclusively for that purpose. Breyolt remembered how keenly he hated idleness.

Beside Rostoff stood Orlei, who had her beak stuffed with a cucumber sandwicheand paused only when she heard Breyolt’s voice. Her beauty hadn’t changed, and when he thought of gilded cages she was a perfect example. Her swan’s grace had softened and spread out in the years since he first knew her. That graceful neck had thickened and her wings sat lazily over her purple corset, which served more decoration than purpose. Her blue skirts trailed behind her like a river where her evolutionary neighbors might swim.

Orlei Holdst was a princess, and it was a well-known fact that Her Utmost liked to collect princes and princesses. Many of the poorer peasant classes had their own oral tales of these royals and the honor, beauty, and moral fortitude they possessed. For that reason, Aurelina liked to completely ruin them. She had done quite well with Orlei since welcoming her into the fold of squabbling sycophants and supplicants. The woman was ruined for normal life, and could survive only in the court with the constant flattery of those beneath her. Furthermore, every princess Breyolt knew of was a scheming, blood-drenched harpy more interested in how her birth order fit into the line of succession than anything else. Orlei, at least, hadn’t very recently had anyone killed for suggesting her sister be groomed to become queen while she spent all her time as a courtier, and the suggestions were indeed being made.

“Breyolt! You old bastard. I saw you grinning over our beautiful All-Queen. What a display that was! True bravery!” Rostoff immediately rose up with some degree of difficulty and reached out a hand covered in biscuit crumbs to Breyolt, who accepted it reluctantly.

“Would that the court were as empty as her bedchambers, I’d have done more than that.”

Rostoff broke into guffaws as he shook Breyolt’s wrist and promptly sank back down onto a creaking bench.

“Are you going to let me speak?” Llerandie huffed. Breyolt met her blue-grey eyes and sank into memory, sank into warm nights in front of a fire while her father slept in the next room. He sank into fondly remembering how many drills he skipped to be with this woman when they were both young. Now she was a viscountess of some volume. “I do remember you Breyolt, two daughters ago. We are well grown now, some of us more than others, and I—”

“Could teach me, Llera?” Breyolt’s lips twisted into an intimation of a smile. Better circumstances would have brought real mirth. He missed these women, but to see them each changed startled him less than surprised him. He knew what went on in the palace. As he met more and more of the courtiers he knew before his absence, he wondered whether he was being left behind while on his campaigns against the rebellious and defiant vassals.

“You were listening. Well, my Lord Duke, listen to this: all of the palace is talking about what you did the other day, on the dais.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And I should have you know that I do not care for your affections. You were a conquest for me and little else. If time makes fools of us, Breyolt, then of you it has made an idiot.”

Breyolt feigned being struck by an arrow, bending back his right shoulder, and laughed. “My word! How I’ve missed you, Llera, and you, Ori, darling!” A pause. “You, Rostoff, I could do without.”

“And I you.” Rostoff snorted his laughter, spilling tea from his cup.

Haughtily, Llerandie turned her head away from Breyolt, but could not hide the hints of a smile. Her horns were dangled with golden chains and shimmering stones, and her gown with its painstakingly woven blue and gold threads was so low cut that Breyolt eagerly anticipated her breasts falling out. He knew it to be the work of Aranella and her seamstresses and mouthed a prayer of thanks to her.

“Well, Ori, I suppose I’ll sit with you. Don’t mind me, you lot, go ahead and continue your conversation. Glottie said you’d be here, so I merely thought to stop pay and pay my respects.”

Breyolt squeezed next to Orlei and she offered him a cursory smile before stuffing herself with another sandwiches. He tried one for himself and found it to be lacking in meat and marrow. The tea, however, was serviceable, and carried a nutty aroma that pleased him.

“I knew it.” Rostoff proclaimed. “Breyolt, off to see Her Utmost after that scene you caused? Everyone talks of it. What I want to know is why she reacted that way to you. None of us have seen her wear such expressions and we are among her closest. What have you got that we haven’t? We can give her glee, humor; arousal, I imagine, though she is guarded with that, but nothing like what you gave her. What was it, Ori, what do you think?”

“Fear, Dorhyt. I suppose it was fear.”

“Indeed! And what has she to fear? She has seen everything. Been everywhere. She is the past and the future. My servants back in Drunne often ask me why she allows others to be so flagrant, so boastful in her court. I tell them it’s because her power is such that she simply doesn’t care about us.”

Breyolt’s ears folded back in a direct representation of his boredom, but he didn’t say a word. Not yet. This was the same sort of reconnaissance his scouts did in the war, only he would do it without killing the alarms-men.

Orlei noticed Breyolt’s expression and cut her way into the exchange. “Breyolt shies away from religious discussions, I see. We are ruled by a living Goddess, Breyolt. Religion serves a real purpose; it is not the fancy of mad tribes who scratch tales of unknown and dead deities into caves. Religious discussions are as necessary as pleasing her with our happiness.”

 “Religion. You know, I never trusted those priestesses. The historians? Who’s to say they aren’t writing something that serves them? Who’s to say their direct line to the Queen is little more than a… a… creative dictation?”

“You’re getting off track, Llera.” Breyolt groaned.

Rostoff wiped his mouth on his sleeve after setting down his teacup. “You’re a virago, Llera, to the death you’ll be bad-mouthing someone else.”

“Dorhyt, you know full well that Carmot is the violent one around here. Don’t you spar with her? Where is she, anyhow?”

Breyolt inclined his muzzle with interest. Carmot was someone he hadn’t seen in some time. Could it be she yet remained as thin and sprightly as he remembered her, with her waist in a leather girdle that allowed for breathtaking back handsprings? Orlei nudged him and nodded her beak toward a distant platter of cold pâté and crackers.

“Carmot is likely torturing dissidents in the dungeons. One must follow their talents, you know. Either that or she is showing the guards what for in their training grounds. The barracks would be a nursery without her guidance.”

Breyolt leaned forward to grab the tray and offered it to Orlei. His lip curled on one side as he leaned against her white feathers and thought of her down pillows. He idly fondled a length of lace that was ornamented down the side of her skirt as the others spoke.

Llerandie rolled her eyes, “one need only think as far as bloodlust to imagine why Her Utmost keeps her around. I cannot watch those interrogations. What are they even for if Her Utmost knows everything?”

“Fun, I imagine.” Breyolt replied nonchalantly.

“Indeed,” added Rostoff, scratching his cheek. “But who’s to say she’s even the one giving those orders? Let me ask you, Breyolt, in our confidence: what do you imagine occurred up there on that dais?”

Breyolt rolled his shoulders and licked his teeth inside his mouth. “I surmise that Her Utmost was merely playing a game with me. That is all. I had not seen her in so long that I felt myself possessed by a boldness of thought and action when blessed with her image. I know not whether she caused the events, foresaw them, or, least believably, was entirely unprepared for them. What I do know is how thrilling it all was.   
  
All I have seen for the last three years is death. Death meted out to those She desired. Death caused for no reason other than her edicts being resisted. Grain rotting in the fields. Trade stalled so the local leaders can enrich themselves. She requires it of me because she adores war and despises complacency. She raises an army, keeps them fed—”

“Overfed,” Rostoff interrupted.

“Yes. And to come back and see her face, to hear her words of admiration for my conquests. To look her in the face as I have looked into the faces of brave men and women as their life ebbed. To have lived through it all. Well. Suffice it to say, it was a fitting reward for services rendered in defending the Queendom from the obstinacy of those She rules.”

Orlei had taken to fanning herself with the tip of her feathered wing as she listened to the proceedings, her eyes closed as if Breyolt’s gruff tenor was music in the quiet gardens. Llerandie fiddled with the chains around her horns with one hoof, and with the other holding a dangling teacup.

“We may trade barbs, Good Duke, as all friends do, but know that I at least respect you.” Rostoff insisted.

“You must,” Breyolt chuckled, “you are only a Baron.”

Rostoff seemed quite amused by this, snorting his laughter as he waved over a servant for another cup of tea.

Llerandie broke her momentary silence, “I must admit I never considered it all from your perspective, Breyolt. Perhaps you did deserve such an encounter with her. And perhaps you deserve more.”

Breyolt offered her a bow of his head despite his superior rank. “And when I do get what I deserve I shall endeavor to instill upon Her Utmost the elegance with which you compose yourself, Princess.” She seemed charmed, and his eyes traced their way down her belly. It was held beneath fine brocade sat out on her knees. Gold anklets hung around her slender ankles. “I think she would be well-advised to adore you even more.” Abruptly, Breyolt stood. With overdue courteousness he bowed lightly at the waist to each of the courtiers, even those below him in rank. “I must away. There is much yet to see and do in the palace. Do you three happen to know where I can procure a meal of my liking? For lunch I was served wellington and watercress swimming in cream. It was disgusting.”

Rostoff nodded. “Everywhere, really, but you’ll have difficulty convincing anyone you want to eat less than a banquet. Unless…”

“Not that much, no. It is meat I’m after, not this overcooked nonsense you all enjoy so much. I am a man of simple tastes. I suppose I shall have a word with my chambermaid. Perhaps I’ll take another bath after dinner…”

Ori could barely tear herself away from a cup of tea long enough to implore, “Breyolt, do see about visiting Carmot. You know she adores you. And I think she should be well interested in your war stories. I think only of her entertainment, you see, where such stories might spoil my appetite… For food.”

Breyolt nodded and adjusted his medallion. Llerandie looked away before his departure.

Carmot would be waiting for him, no doubt. She was too much of a busy body to pull herself away from her work, so he would have to seek her out. As he excused himself and returned through the gardens the way he came, he rotated over and over in his head her name. Carmot. Perhaps she was the only one left who was like him.


	4. The Swordmaiden

_ W_ _ith Respect to The Ducal Court of Linalita,_

_It is Our pleasure on this day, Windress Fourteen, Our Year 1789, to congratulate Marquess Breyolt Selfridge, Son of the Duke of Linalita, for his ascension to the ducal throne, effective immediately. As the Marquess is currently away at war, in lieu of a ceremony do accept this bouquet of red roses from Our garden and this signed letter as proof of Our blessing and Our acceptance of Breyolt Selfridge, heretofore to be referred to as the Duke of Linalita._

_Her Utmost, The All-Queen, Aurelina_

\--

The warmth of the spring sun seemed to make the land shine in response. It bathed the county in a golden light that flickered off the cerulean tiles of Greye, the capitol city of Greyeveldt. The air flickered with unearthly heat and choked with the black scent of fire and smoke as the fields were burned and the people slaughtered. An invading force had worked its way through a sparsely protected main street, entering homes and shops to kill everyone they found. Once the soldiers cleared the way, the cleaners employed by the duchy sorted the casualties of both sides.

At the gates of the Greyeveldt castle, the artillery, long in disrepair, failed the defenders with misfire after misfire. The gate was blown open by cannons and the archers were shot from superior range with rifled muskets. Breyolt, leading the Linalitan Armed Forces, kicked the door to the grand hall open with a roar and pressed his pistol into the chest of the first guard inside. As he fired, the muzzle-flash illuminated a splash of blood and his sword cut through the gorget of a lion in a rusty suit of armor.

“Everyone inside! Capture the castle!” Breyolt’s orders reverberated above the din of battle.

Every soldier from infantry to captain held Breyolt in the highest regard, for a standard noble would have sat behind his palace walls and issued commands while blind to the reality of the battlefield. The wolf took point as his soldiers flowed into the hall, the finest combatants in the queendom now as locusts. Breyolt charged, nicked by poorly fletched arrows and disintegrating swords. A lesser noble would not carry the scars he did, sacrificed to the army by his father. But such was Linalita and such was Breyolt’s father. The orders were to take Countess Greyeveldt alive. According to queendom law, the ruler of a land marked for reformation would be spared so that they might be brought before Aurelina herself.

Valka Larinner, Countess of Greyeveldt, was not a traitor. She did not foment rebellion. She did not plot against the throne. The only crime she and her people had committed was their lack of divine foresight. Ten years ago, crops failed all throughout her county. The Countess’ lands lie barren for the season after a horrendous blight struck the fields. As a result, to feed her people, the gold in the coffers went to the import of food. This led to a decrease in military spending, which, to them, made sense. The only wars in the Queendom were against small rebellions declaring the Queen unfit.

The reduction of spending on the military proved a boon to the rest of the county, and additional decreases were made in order to improve various local infrastructure. Over the course of the decade, the Countess laid the groundwork for additional investment in the land and its people, losing focus on the production of food thanks to the easy availability of staple imports from Eastern Aurivir. The county flourished. It was, some said, a renaissance of a depressed region teetering on the brink of irrelevance. A bustling trading center began to crop up in Greye, the city surrounding Greyeveldt castle. The Countess swam in the love of her people. Focus was lost. The original purpose of the county was to supply food, and its fields were lying unused. Neighboring countries began to starved. While Greyeveldt glutted itself on the food meant for the Queendom’s capitol, it painted a target on itself in bold, bloody red.

War gave the people something to rally against; something to hope toward and goals to meet. Through their unending, infallible All-Queen, all were given purpose. The purpose of the Duchy of Linalita was to produce warriors. It was responsible for the production not of food, but of the finest soldiers and gladiators of the Queendom. While the gladiators were actors in the sport of combat, the soldiers were actors in the sport of war. Both sports kept the world entertained. Infantry were trained throughout Linalita, while officers were trained in Cvaravald Keep and were such skilled tacticians that they rarely suffered casualties, much less defeats. On occasion, smaller detachments of vassal state armies had been repelled. But no one had ever repelled the Linalitan Armed Forces.

They found the Countess cowering in her bedroom.

\--

“Come on, men, look alive!” Her voice was intercut by the tang of blades meeting in the air. Breyolt approached and saw her gracefully pirouette out of the way of a killing blow. She turned into the soldier’s mass and set him off balance, striking him with the upturned pommel of her sword. “Slow!” She cried, bending down around another slash from the second soldier of three with which she was engaged. To Breyolt’s surprise, she was still as slender as he remembered her, a marten of many talents. Her black face and yellow chest moved as easily as a bee between the soldier’s weapons, and with artful half-turns she avoided vertical slashes and sent kicks into the knees and stomachs of her attackers. In twenty seconds, she was the only one standing.

“Breyolt!” She called, waving her free arm over to him. She wore black stockings under a light mail hauberk, which she lifted off to reveal a leather breastplate and tight girdle. It supported her spine and she stood gracefully, one leg crossed in front of the other, her chest rising heavily with her breath.

As Breyolt approached, Carmot looked down to the soldiers and smiled. “They’re getting better, Breyolt.” She beamed with pride. “One of them almost touched me, I swear it.” Each soldier was twice her weight, at least. Her waist was trim, her limbs narrow and girlish, and they were bulky guards. Nothing like the blobs encased in walls of metal that guarded the gates with halberds. She put her arms around Breyolt when he was near enough and felt his strong hand on the back of her head, pressing it into his chest warmly.

“You train them as if they were your children. The future of the kingdom depends on them, eh?” Breyolt smiled.

“Quite so!” she agreed. “And may I say, Breyolt, you are a sight for sore eyes!” Her eyes were dark brown and he liked to look into them. When she broke away from his embrace, she stopped to watch the beaten soldiers gather themselves up and bow to the Duke before trotting away toward the barracks. “I missed your departure those three years ago. I never got to say goodbye. I waited for six months to hear news of your survival, and, you skirt chaser, you send the letter to Lady Glottina! Let me tell you, Breyolt, you’ll get lost if you go under her – though maybe hiding from me would be the best option!” Playfully, she raised a hand to strike him, but stopped short and caught herself laughing.

Breyolt blushed uncontrollably, shifting his stance. “It was all very urgent. You know how the orders come. Linalita needed me.”

“Linalita,” Carmot retorted, “needs sun for more than six months out of the year. If only Her Utmost would find it in her heart to help. And how does that explain the letter, anyway?”

“Well, Glottie begged me for it. Imagine my surprise when, three months into the campaign, I find a perfume-soaked letter in my extra pair of boots. She slipped it in! The things it described I cannot repeat in polite company but suffice it to say I owed the woman a reply.”

“Sly devil. You’d live to the hilt in a woman if you didn’t have to pull out for a piss every once in a while.”

Breyolt guffawed, bending at the waist, summoning a bright smirk from Carmot as she examined him, sizing him up. While she did, he noticed her left arm, with the wide crescent scar under the inside of her elbow.

“Now that we’ve all the vinegar out of the way what do you say we find a place to sit and talk?”

“Oh no, Breyolt, not just yet.”

“Not done humiliating me?”

“Think I wanted to ask you to spar with me, first. Get you nice and tired so you can’t squirm your way out of anything I ask you.”

“What are you planning on asking me?” Breyolt began to remove his pistol belt.

“How it was you lost so bad.”

While he searched for an answer, she promenaded to a rack against one of the stone walls and procured a sword the same as her own. A short haft, long blade, and a guard that curved into an ‘S’ shape. Breyolt caught it in the air when she tossed it to him. “Let’s see; first blood, how about that?” Carmot asked as she lowered herself into a stance he didn’t recognize.

“Yes. But if I draw your blood, I lose as well. Satisfactory?”

“En garde!” Carmot called, leaping eagerly toward him and spinning like a top. Breyolt took a step back as if he were too close to a painting and raised his blade to block the blow so casually that it could not have been anything other than muscle memory.

Though she was five years younger than him, Carmot had impressed him greatly at an annual gladiator tournament in Glosserose. Originally, he had gone there to spectate, but found himself in the hypogeum paying capitol gold for the marten who had left her arm in the sand. A day later, he returned to the palace with her and her arm, kept in a chest of ice. When he had gained Her Utmost’s ear and described to her the ruthless acuity with which the woman fought, she demanded to see her. After that audience, Carmot had her arm again, along with a scar of reminder. She had been a slave, and though Breyolt had bought her freedom, he had wondered whether her new life as a palace guard wasn’t a more harrowing form of oppression.

“Keep your arm up.” Breyolt instructed, testing her with a blow aimed toward her chest. She ducked under it effortlessly.

“I was going down.”

Then they were quiet, save for grunts and short breaths. Carmot retreated and assumed a hanging guard, but Breyolt pressed with a horizontal feint into a vertical cut. Carmot’s blade moved like the hand of a clock to push away Breyolt’s, and she made to circle his blade entirely in order to counter thrust. Breyolt’s body was never where she struck, and she began to grow irritated. As he feinted and probed to gauge her reactions, she broke tempo and made a vertical cut so fast and so high that she was able to carry it into a back handspring. The leather around her waist creaked, keeping her back supported but flexible. Her off hand caught the floor, and she caught sight of Breyolt stumbling backward. Premature glee turned to disappointment when she realized she had only struck his blade and thrown him off balance.

Breyolt expected a quick advance. Anyone else might have needed a moment to recover from such a stunt, but he knew Carmot very well. He knew her personality translated into her sword fighting. The night just after he bought her freedom, when she had come to him begging to return the favor of her life, he denied her. It was only until she was her own woman, a guard commander, that he pursued a brief but passionate relationship. Two summers were all they had together.

As expected, Carmot proceeded toward him, waving her blade in unbalanced, queer motions like a blind snake striking. Breyolt let his sword drop and focused on his footwork. The graceful shifting of his sabatons on the wooden floor echoed the hissing of her cuts, but she could not hit him. She grew tired, having overexerted herself in her eagerness to prove something. Her mistake had been made before the spar began. When she stepped too far into an angled thrust, Breyolt dove in beside her and thumped his elbow down on her back. He took her wrist in his left hand as she reeled. It was done.

“We have bled enough in our lives, so let this be the end.” Breyolt said softly.

“Speak for yourself,” Carmot laughed, “I bleed once a month.”

\--

“Your ladyship.” Breyolt sneered the words and fought the urge to scream in outrage. He was disheveled, bruised, bloodied from the grisly work of invading slaughter. In taking the castle alone he bathed his hands in the blood of a dozen men and women sworn to protect the countess, and here she was in her bedroom, stuffing a chest with dresses and gold and drinking wine. “Wetting your throat while I gut your guards? Even for a noble that is a bit heartless, don’t you think? They’re people too. They have feelings, and families – or, rather, they had.”

Countess Greyeveldt whirled around in horror.. Her pleated bed clothes were stained with wine, and she was drunk. She had started drinking with selfish abandon when news arrived of the invading army. She rested against her four-poster bed, surrounded by armoires that had, over the last several hours, been emptied. Breyolt’s words caught her mid-sip, a bottle of wine under her arm. She was wearing her bedclothes, her doe’s tail anxiously flitting in fear.

“My, what fine dresses you have.” Breyolt continued, and as he approached the woman took another draught, then steadied herself. Her servants were frozen, horrified, panicked and impotent. The only sounds in the room were the heaving breath from the countess and the ominously gradual approach of her wolf conqueror. “We have taken the castle,” he added. His hand shook as he placed his gun into its holster, but he held his sword. In the doorframe, wide enough if barely to accommodate the chest the deer was filling with riches, his lieutenants stood at the ready. “We have taken your county. I do hope you regret your insouciance while it all burns around you. Can you smell the smoke on the air?”

Countess Greyeveldt swallowed a mouthful of wine with finality, and proudly returned Breyolt’s sneer. She dropped the bottle and wiped her hooves on her dress.

“I can smell your northern filth.” Her harsh, strained voice filled the bedchamber like a crack from a whip, but Breyolt was unperturbed. He approached her and, sword in hand, grabbed a goblet from a table. Wielding it like a weapon, he struck, forcing it against her mouth and smirking with glee as it poured over her face and into her mouth. She did not protest but greedily licked up what may have been her last moments of freedom and of pleasure.

“If they hang you, they’ll tie weights to your legs, and your head will be ripped off. You do know that, do you not? And yet you allowed all this to happen. Encouraged it. Drove it.”

“We should decide our own purpose.” Greyeveldt spat, narrowing her pretty blue eyes.

“You should, you say? And not some fat, far removed ruler sitting in her palace?”

The beaten doe turned her head away, as nobles were so wont to do. But Breyolt grabbed her about her chin with his free hand and turned her snout to face him. He leaned over her from the side to reach her, and to put his face in hers. His teeth shone like a row of swords.

“I outrank you. I decide every morsel of the meal of your fate.”

“Her Utmost will judge me. I will argue my case to her. I will be maintained as ruler of these lands! Do you not behold my riches and glory? As she spoke her tone wrested away from calm and ran toward panic and alarm. “I have attained everything! I am a beacon of her enlightened rule, of her tenets of surplus and self-indulgence! Look at how I have ascended for her, the finest dresses in the world line my walls, I drink wine older than you!” She pleaded as her hooves gestured at the wealth accumulated around her. They were shaking.

“You cannot hide from her in a mountain of gold!” Breyolt snapped. “Pray do not worry about Her Utmost. I will adjudicate you presently. Arzan, fetch me a quartermaster and a cut of the finest meat. My dear lady, Valka, is it? You are so loyal to your people. Your trade policies have fostered their success and the revitalization of this county of yours. Soon you shall see at what cost.”

He enjoyed the sweat on her brow, the scent of fear that she, a prey animal, exhibited so quickly when faced with his fangs. When the quartermaster arrived twenty minutes later, her smock a thick, black red, she handed Breyolt a mass of meat in a package of paper and twine. He let it fall onto Countess Greyeveldt’s bed and enjoyed her wincing. “Do you know some say gave our Queen the power she wields?” As he spoke, he carefully unwrapped the package, ignoring the woman’s quivering lower lip. “Consumption of lesser flesh. And there is a lesson to be learned in it.” His hands worked quickly and gracefully in spite of his care, and soon the package unfolded like a flower and revealed its grisly contents: the elegantly flayed meat from the body of a castle guard. It was well marbled and glistened with the freshness of recent death. “This was one of yours. Of that you have no doubt, I trust.” He grinned crazily. “The livestock were his lesser, so he ate them. He is your lesser, so too will you eat him.” Breyolt still held his sword, but now he held it to her throat, counting her chins with it as he pressed the raw meat against her sneering mouth.

Countess Greyeveldt moaned in dismal revulsion, but did not attempt to pull away, for she had at least some of her wits about her. The flavor was unspeakable. A tender, forbidden flavor. It entered her mouth like no meat she had ever tasted, and she had never liked meat. Now, tasting this, she was sure she did, and the very thought horrified her beyond words of tearful solicitation or thoughts of madness. For a brief moment she thought that she regretted all her time spent eating pastries, dressed salads, breads and soups when there was meat in the world.

“There is a hierarchy to this world, immutable in its simplicity.” Breyolt placed his hand on the doe’s throat to insist she swallow. “We have rank. We are participants in a system of governance in which all answer to Her Utmost. You cannot save yourself from me, and I cannot save myself from her. I am as helpless to her divine will as you are to my corrupt, vindictive, flawed, mortal one. There is no escape from this system, and you shall well know the price of your ignorance when She and her courtiers feast on you. Figuratively, I hope. The outcome of your willful self-righteousness will be naught but another mouthful of hubris for them. My only wish, from the goodwill of my soul as that of a fellow component in this structure of entitlement, is that you are not served alive.”

The doe swallowed and, of her own will, took another bite. Breyolt nodded.

“Instruct the butchers to bring the blood they so well harvest. Tell those mosquitos to bring every jar. Which way is your bath chamber, my Lady? I worked up a sweat cutting my way through your incompetent defenses.”

No one could tell if he was joking.

\--

“What have you been eating, Breyolt? You look as if you’ve starved yourself for the occasion of our reunion.” Carmot looked gently at Breyolt’s, his tight waist and powerful upper body. “Is there aught to eat up in Linalita but the lichen you can lick from rocks?”

Breyolt caught himself smiling and quickly forced himself to stop. “Availing myself of the palace’s meat has been my pleasure in the week since I have returned. Though, I have yet to be served a rare enough plate.”

“I know your plight,” Carmot groaned, “prey should not be allowed to cook meat, for they overcook it every time. I once received a steak so charred it way as well have been prepared in Hell itself. I complain and apologize profusely. But they always make the same mistake. I’ve had to specially request that a predator prepare my meat.”

“Does it help?”

“It does, although wolves are better at cooking gamey meats like boar or deer… Bears naturally excel at the preparation of fish. Though there is some crossover. What’s more, thanks to our Queen we have no riots when we hunt four-leggeds for food. Not like in the history books. Now even our herbivorous neighbors eat the flesh of their holdovers either from the farm or the forest. I tell you it is less and less remarkable to witness a cow eating beef. In another generation we shall all be omnivores.”

“I have come to realize such distinctions are meaningless. We are all Her prey.”

“That is true.”

The mirth of their reunion was broken into a silence as awkward as it was long. The two companions were sitting in the outer bailey, the grass beneath them cool and pleasant as they watched the palace guards drill and exercise. Mail armor clanked and shook and boots skid upon the dirt of the training grounds. Several thinner guards roared as they charged the plate mail girth of a tremendous rhino in a feathered bascinet and succeeded in doing little other than eliciting a deafening clang at the moment of impact. Despite the broad variance in the weight of these guards, all of them were fit and capable of destroying a lesser garrison on their own – or so it was said. It was more likely they would get winded severing the spine of a bandit or two.

“Do you ever think you’ll succumb to the same frivolity as the other courtiers? I’ve wondered why you do not look like the others in her retinue.”

Carmot laughed freely. “Such bold talk! I’ll have you know I am well-liked by the others. I know what you’re thinking, Breyolt.”

“That this place is nothing but a fleshpot?”

“Yes!” And she pushed his shoulder in jest. “But they do love me. I carry fine conversation. I enjoy fine food, though not as much. She enjoys their company, their happiness. I should think it… comforts her, in some way. Or perhaps it is merely her penchant for reasons I cannot comprehend. It reflects upon one poorly to over-speculate as to the caprices and fancies of Her Utmost.”

Breyolt nodded solemnly. He felt fresh sweat from the sparring match and regretted it, for he still craved another bath. These thoughts were cast like petals to the wind as Carmot leaned against him and pulled her hands up around her bent knee.

“I missed sitting with you. It has been long since I saw you last, longer still since we loved each other, and yet… To lead Her Utmost’s guard is a great and worthy task, I do not misspeak, but…”

Breyolt shook his head. “No need. I understand.”

Another silence passed between them and Breyolt spent it chewing on his teeth.

“And you? Why aren’t you a true courtier yet?” Carmot asked matter-of-factly. “You who lick the blood from the bones of war?”

Breyolt looked at her helplessly. She had turned to ask him this question, and he felt his bile rise with his answer.

“I must remain as I am or die in the field. Worse yet, I could go the way of my father. They speak highly of dying in your bed, but I don’t think they imagined being stabbed to death in it. Giving in and going soft is a trap and I refuse to succumb to it. If I become like that kept sorcerer of hers, it shall be my end.”

“And yet you don’t shy away from them. Yes? It is the business of my guards to inform me everything of the events of the palace. You are still partial to Glottina, are you not even though she’s not the lithe little thing you once knew? The shape of her hips, oh I could stare at them all day…”

“I—”

“And did you know, Breyolt, that she and I have spent long hours together discussing life? That she and I have shared secrets, including the contents of that letter?”

“I did not. Regrettably, we have had little time together since I returned. With all respect due our past relationship, hers is a fruit I should like to vigorously pluck, over and over.”

At this Carmot slapped him on the back. “There you are, you lothario! No wonder you aren’t softer – you can’t think with your stomach, but only your cock!” The last word was shouted so loudly and with such glee that several of the nearer guards looked. Breyolt fiercely waved his hands to indicate they need look elsewhere. When he turned back to Carmot, he grinned proudly.

“I am Breyolt Selfridge, the Duke of Linalita, and lest you forget, I have always taken what I want when there comes a time that I want it. And while there are many things I would be happy to have in this enlightened palace and its overburdened courtiers, there is only one that I _want_.”

“And what is that?”

“I want Aurelina.”

Carmot blanched, grabbing him around the neck and pulling his head down to whisper, “How can you speak so easily?!”

“Don’t bother girding your speech, Carmot. She knows our thoughts and desires, does she not? And yet I have harbored this desire anew and with fervor ever since I returned. When I served her in my youth, my bloody youth, I thought of her as she is. Beyond a Goddess. But now… Now that I have aged and she has not, now that I have fought and toiled and she has sat on her throne barely seeing fit to wave her hands... I want her, and not just because I find I am owed it when I tally up my service to the Queendom, but because she is the most beautiful being in the land, and I am possessed with the need to bend her to my will and make her love me as she has never loved a courtier. As she has never loved at all.”

Carmot snorted dismissively. “So, all about your cock, truly, is it? Do men ever do or say anything for other reasons? I thought for sure you were different. She kills with impunity, decides all our laws, wars against her own, and you desire love? Her beauty is as legendary as it is powerful, but you err to think she is capable of love. I have seen her during the feasts and the celebrations. She just…watches. Can she even comprehend mortal happiness? To think she is knowable is to err. I respect you, Breyolt, but I worship her.”

Breyolt stared through the walls surrounding the courtyard. He started far, far into the distance, beyond all obstacles.

“And if you did not need to worship her, would you?”

“Yes.” Carmot answered automatically. Then she bit her lip, narrowing her eyes at him as if he were as distant as his gaze. “I loved her for what she did for me. I truly did. But the more I think about how those bloody rebellions, her cruelty… I sometimes think I hate her. I imagine many other than I hate her. It is a complicated hate. To hate her is to hate all we know. So, we bury it in our hearts and we live in love, as if we have become our roles as actors. Those who speak the truth to her are not spared punishment.”

“Do the others feel this way? Rostoff? Princess Holdst?”

“It’s impossible to say… I think they might be so far in her lifestyle that they don’t care. They live to enjoy themselves, as their family lines have for time immemorial. You, Breyolt, even your father was monstrous in his passions.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” Breyolt said in defense.

“But your mother did not succumb?”

“No. You’ve never met my mother, but she never leaves Linalita. She abdicated the throne to me; in truth, Her Utmost passed her up entirely.”

“And?”

“And we are estranged. My father and I were too cruel for her. I have killed too many for her to love me as a son. But I wouldn’t trade the life I had. I’m good at it.”

“It’s far better than… I mean to say…” Carmot danced around the obstacles of her thoughts. “I admit it. I find pleasure in the fine food, the art and the music, the orgies. I’ve tasted of the Princess, and the Viscountess more times than you have.”

“The Queen doesn’t participate in any orgies, does she?” Breyolt asked hopefully.

“Oh. No.”

“Have you been with the court sorcerer?”

“Tickled my tenderest with his teeth.”

“And Glottie?” Breyolt asked with a bit of bare envy.

“No, she is, uh, not persuaded by the charms and guiles of femininity, myriad though they are.”

“Myriad my tail, I’ve seen you knock back beer. What erudite poetry you weave when you’re falling down drunk, oh captain.” He sneered playfully.

“Shut up, Breyolt, and listen. Have you made it with one of them since returning? Are you sure another romp with Lady DuParlesse, give or take a few dress sizes, wouldn’t cure you of that nasty philosophy you’ve developed toward our All-Queen?”

“A few?”

“All of it went to the right places, I tell you."

“Carmot, my dear, I hesitate to say this, but we’ve now come full circle, and _you_ are thinking with _my_ cock.”

“In that case,” Carmot grinned, standing up and shouting briefly at one of her guards before turning back to Breyolt, “I’ll think long and hard. Fare you well, Breyolt. My boys and girls need some expert instruction.”


	5. Behind Closed Doors

“Your Utmost, Breyolt was here a moment ago—”

“Is that why you enter my bath chambers? To talk about a man?”

“No, Your Utmost, I simply—”

“Shhh,” Aurelina coaxed, turning from where she stood beneath a fall of water and steam. She willed it, and the water disappeared. Servants with trays of hard rolled candies, their gowns soaking wet, disappeared into the wings of the room. Her hair, straight and pink, enrobed her plush form, her slender shoulders and her breasts.  Her figure shamed Venus herself. Though Glottina was used to it, she blushed despite herself. The All-Queen approached her, serene, the only sound the dripping of water onto swirling blue tile. Her hips swayed this way, then that, heavy and broad like a uniquely shapely pear. One hand on her own soft belly, one hand crossing a finger over her black lips. The silence that passed between the two women was nothing to Aurelina, but everything to Glottina, who felt herself sweat, and not from the steam. The arches and columns seemed to echo that anticipation.

“Let us talk of you.” Aurelina cooed, striding to Glottina and past her, her hand running under the vixen’s chin as to direct her gaze to follow her. Across the tile, she turned to her bed chambers, a suite of several rooms, the doors to which Mindt and another mousy servant opened without a word. “You who have such privilege, Grand Chamberlain, and so grand you have become. I remember when you sat on a chaise like a bundle of matches. Now, the blossom of womanhood has swollen you to grandiose proportions such that, know you this, all the eyes in the court find their way to you, if ever they have had enough of me.”

Glottina followed her with interest and struggled to keep her demeanor relaxed and casual. She was the woman closest to the Queen, yet her eyes drifted downward and away purely out of respect. The rugs over the parquet floors of her bedchamber must have taken generations to weave, so intricate were their depictions of rubenesque beauties throughout time immemorial. She wondered if she would ever be sewn in likeness on a rug and decided the flattering portraits in her chateau were to her preference. The heat from the bathroom, like a sauna, caused her to sweat over her brow and under her arms and breasts. She huffed and puffed and availed herself of an overstuffed chaise lounge with crème white and candy pink cushions. Her rump spread over it like butter.

“Your praise fills my breast so!” She squeaked as she sat down, immediately retrieving her fan and sighing as she cooled herself. Her corset creaked and her breasts seemed to surge briefly as she arched her back.

“Yes,” Aurelina said warmly, like a song. The wox had her arms raised, and the chambermaids were drying her, gazing at her like it was the first time. Even if one didn’t agree with her decrees, her guidance, they had to admit her body was beautiful, soft, full and womanly. When she was dry they for several minutes brushed and combed her hair, pulling the long tresses to length and caring for every last strand. Then they began to dress her. First a white shift that to the touch seemed as air, resting lightly on her dark grey fur. The fingers of the chambermaids lingered in her fur as they work. Mindt in particular, perhaps because of her youthful age, was fascinated by her exemplary attributes. At once, the two maids kneeled while Aurelina sat on the edge of her bed, sinking into the mountains and valleys of lush duvets and quilts. Half of her sat behind the curtains, only her chubby legs sticking out while the girls pulled her stockings up to the apex of her generous thighs.

The conversation broke off during all this until Aurelina saw fit to continue it. “Get her something to eat.” She ordered from behind the curtains, utterly without emotion. The corners of the room leapt with scurrying servants, who made their way to an overstocked larder just a door or two away and returned as the chambermaids continued to lace up Aurelina’s bodice expertly. To Glottina they wheeled a cart of two levels: the lower upon which rested towers of teacakes and the upper upon which sat a full service. One of the servants poured her a cup of black tea and began to spoon in clotted cream. Looking to Glottina for an acknowledgement of ‘enough’. Glottina shrugged.

Further silence accompanied Glottina’s tea sipping, and she savored it. She swirled the thick creamy liquid in her mouth, felt the sweetness sink into her tongue. A heavy swallow preceded a forkful of fluffy yellow cake with white icing and pale pink frosting roses. The vines of green frosting encircling the teacake were the product of a master artisan, originally a stonecrafter, and they should by all accounts have been immortalized in marble. Instead, hours of work disappeared in a second. Glottina was completely absorbed in the tea and cake, which she found to taste like a symphony sounded. Her ears only perked when Aurelina spoke again and she was halfway through a slice of trifle.

“Your presence at my side is ever appreciated,” the All-Queen commented. Her servants had applied the bumrolls and the ruffs to her hips and shoulders. Her quilted bodice fit snugly atop her decadent volume. They carefully hooked the sleeves of her gown into place. Unlike all other noble women, she refused to wear a skirt unless on special occasions. Now the servants, with a number of compact, gilded boxes, penned and dusted makeup round her eyes, rouged her cheeks. Lastly a smear of dark fuchsia paste on a rod of glass colored the plump of her black lips. “You are a vision, a work of art. Let us speak of women.” The servants faded away to their posts as the All-Queen approached Glottina, only one remaining to pour tea if needed. “You are closest to me. And as such there is a level of trust between us. I could trust you with anything, could I not?”

Glottina’s rouged cheeks appeared more rouge and she nodded eagerly. “Every word from you disappears into my vault, never to be spread, never. Everything between us is secret.”

 _Leave us._ Aurelina mouthed the words and the servants fled the room.

“There is something I wish to try and learn,” Aurelina began, hesitance in her voice. “As I am Queen, I expect you to assist me… May I ask you a question?”

Glottina nodded. She stared at her Queen. Her nose was a glistening black onyx. Her eyes drifted away from Glottina’s and considered the curtains over a window onto a balcony.

Aurelina walked just close enough to retrieve an elegant white cake, small enough to fit in her paw but, like all sweets in her palace, over-iced. She flopped down next to Glottina and stress-ate. She smeared the frosting over her perfect lips as she gobbled the cake and licked her fingers, then sighed. Glottina stared.

“I still do not understand so many things about you mortals,” she finally said.

“What sort of things?” Glottina asked. Her paw gripped her fan tightly.

“Your difficulties. Your sadness. Your struggle. I do not well know ill-feelings, pain, misery. There is a black square in my mind where you mortals have all these things.”

Glottina leaned slightly closer, smelling the Queen’s perfumed fur and lupine scent. She waited for the Queen to speak further and when she did not, she replied.

“Those things are for us. You are Divine.”

“And your sex.”

Glottina spit her tea into her cup, “what?”

“Your bodies. You procreate through sex. I do not think I do that.”

“You… you don’t know?”

Aurelina stopped speaking and turned away from her grand chamberlain. She stared at a portrait on the wall of herself amidst her rose gardens. Her hand was cradling a bud so gently that the viewer could not tell whether she was touching it.

“It is quite unpleasant. I created you, then I did other things, and I turn around… suddenly you are procreating in such a fashion. You meet, you turn red, ah, like you are now, and then you enter each other…”

“You… you don’t…”

Aurelina rose and turned her back. “Do not squander the gift of my confiding in you. I have nothing more to say at this time and you may leave me.”

Glottina swallowed and basked in the memory of the moment that she thought was going to come to pass. She did not speak for some time. Then she did.

“Y-your Utmost…I understand. I apologize.” she stammered, flushed.

“You think of it even now. Stop thinking about it. You are beautiful, this is true, but you are my chamberlain and you have your job to do.”

\--

Breyolt ruminated over Carmot’s words on his way to Glottina’s chambers. They were adjacent to the All-Queens, and nearly as opulent, that is, if one supposed that ten was a number near to one hundred. He, a man used to rooms of few indulgences, felt out of place in the times he had been inside them. Even his apartments in the palace with their tapestries, portraits, and other assorted objets d’art, set him ill at ease and he longed for the barren walls of his chambers at home in Linalita, where coin went to good steel and little else. Once, in Glottina’s bedchamber some years ago, he pulled his head out of her loins and nearly broke his neck slipping on the waxed floors of gratuitous arrangement. How much the two of them had moistened them was not something he considered to be part of the problem.

In Linalita, the walls were stone, not wood. The uncommon tapestry there showed battles, not beauty. He remembered fondly the days when he would eat with his late father at the banquet table in the hall. Covered in medals and sporting his stovepot armor at the dinner table was a point of pride for Duke Adalhert Selfridge. He loved appearing martial in any context. The man could put away steak like no other, and Breyolt took after him.

“The beauty of a cut of meat,” Breyolt’s father once told him, “is the liquid therein. See how it oozes and glistens? Sweet as red wine. Rich as royal blood.”

Breyolt was never able to spend much time with his father, most notably due to the frequent warring and rebuilding campaigns. Rebellions of action or of war happened as upstarts desired the Queen’s throne, even though none were fit to sit on it, or had any hope of drawing anywhere near it. She had a close relationship with Breyolt’s father, and rich living added inch after inch to the man’s waistline during his thirties. When he was murdered at fifty-five, he had been enormous. By then he had become a ravenous old wolf who craved meat as much as he craved glory, and battle had given him much of both. Stories of enemies consumed on the battlefield were myriad and were as commonplace causes of death and destruction as swords. As mighty a warrior as he was, his wisdom in battle failed him in his bed, and there he was assassinated. In the years it had been since that day, since the initial inquiry to the royal throne for arbitration was ignored, Breyolt had known better than to mention it in person to the All-Queen. Despite his love for his father, despite a neophyte’s desire for justice, Breyolt loved power more. He loved ascending to the ducal throne and the way he heard people speak of him. And he loved that it brought him closer to Aurelina.

There had been no time for a ceremony. The duke’s body was put to the torch, and Breyolt, a marquess at the time, called back from war. A grim funereal procession was all he was able to see, for not even the bones remained. Breyolt had looked over and over at the emotionless letter from the All-Queen and decided to take judgment into his own hands. His father’s girth, which had been foisted on him by those court flatterers in the capitol, did nothing to weaken his prowess as a warrior. As such, the insurrection that murdered him and sought to control the duchy was quelled as baseless and corrupt after adequate proof was presented. The nobles who conspired against the ducal throne were layabouts and had few glories in battle. At the tribunal, Breyolt presented written accounts from the Battle of Aurdor, during which Adalhert had: smashed the enemy commander into a red pulp with one blow from a morningstar; bitten the head off a fusilier after deflecting the bullet with his curved vambrace (a point of contention here: it may have taken two bites to completely devour his head); and destroyed a regiment of reinforcements with a body tackle.

Once Breyolt has cleared his father’s name to the people of Linalita, he set about having the nobles who had plotted and schemed against him gathered up and imprisoned. Though they threatened action, though they threatened harm, and they threatened the involvement of the All-Queen, they all died by his bare hands. It was a deed he very much enjoyed. It had taken him half the day, and that night, his hands still red with blood after several washes, he feasted on steaks the cuts of which were from each of the executed conspirators. Now that he knew the Queen better, he imagined she would have approved.

The sound of plucked strings assaulted Breyolt’s ears like the lapping of a struck match singing the hairs within. Though there were many minstrels throughout the queendom and particularly the palace, there was only one whose chords were as advanced. The ascension of an arpeggio crept along with the clanking approach of Breyolt’s sabatons. Stopping in the doorway, he arrived just in time to see Glottina belch behind her fan as if to accompany the music.

Glottina was taking a large bite of a flaky goose pie, the innards of which oozed down her chin in a cream sauce with corn and fennel. She was delicately seated upon a divan, swaying herself with the music as she ate. Upon seeing Breyolt, she took her time to swallow and help herself to a gulp of pink champagne before nodding with deference. The look in her eye was far more familiar. The light blue and pink dress she wore seemed fit to burst, with the ribbon of the corset in front having unraveled somewhat to allow the breath and the bulge of her irresponsible bosom. Before meeting her eyes Breyolt briefly scanned her cleavage to confirm his suspicions about her beauty mark.

Ollamayne had just taken his fingers, ending in hardened masses of hoof, from the strings of his cittern. The antelope regarded Breyolt with a as much distaste as he could before the wolf looked toward him and he forced a smile. Between the black mask of his forehead and snout, his eyes disappeared as narrow slits in the yellow butterfly of fur over them. Without a word he calmly raised his hands, his portly underarms shaking, and began to stroke a series of strings suspended between his tall, graceful horns.

“Cease that tasteless lament.” Breyolt snapped, turning away from the antelope and approaching Glottina with a smile. “Must you always keep such talentless company as this rhapsodist?”

Glottina shoveled a handful of hazelnuts into her mouth and guzzled a glass of sheep’s milk to prepare herself for the brief refrain from eating she would have to undergo in order to carry on a conversation.

“Breyolt,” and she swallowed, “Isaac is Her Utmost’s favorite! In a moment’s time he intended to sing me one of his ballads. Will you not let him proceed? Not all of us can sustain ourselves on the sound of snow falling in the forest!” She spoke in earnest and Breyolt saw in her eyes the strong will of the young woman he had loved, the girl who used her honest sweetness and her charms to do what power and intellect could not. He, who had ample power at his disposal, could acquire a great many things by permitting the indulgence of others from time to time.

“Very well.” He smirked but it faded quickly when he turned to face Ollamayne. “Proceed, chanteur.” The blade of his tone threatened to cut the strings both on his cittern and between his horns.

Ollamayne nodded wordlessly and loosely held the neck and the shield-shaped body of his instrument. The first stroke filled the chamber with warm acoustics, and the setting sun eased in through the windows in time as the clouds abated to offer the orb one last gasp of brilliance for the day. With the slow movement of one hoof and the tempered grip of the other, chord after chord awakened to serenade the vixen. The sun caught Ollamayne’s horns and he cast a shadow like a stately statue, portly in the middle but with elegant curvature above.

Breyolt scowled at the sickeningly euphoric display.

The loose sleeves of Ollamayne’s robe did not impede his work with his instrument. Though he was a frequent sight in the palace, he did not dress in the same fashion as most other courtiers. He wore long robes and sirwal the color of sand, with hems of complicated foreign patterns. Colorful sashes draped over his body and contoured the stout apple shape of his torso and a band around his waist held in his belly like a string might hold a melon. A decorative jambiya sat tucked into the band, and it was doubtful he would ever use it to do anything other than peel fruit he came across on the road.

Ollamayne’s amber eyes lidded and his sonorous voice began his verses.

_“On the graceful wave_

_Of southward seas and shores_

_The winds and waters sing her name_

_The chattel fight her wars_

_Of her beauty, crystalline_

_The difficulty to define_

_Our perfect Queen bestows her grace_

_As from the sun the rays efface...”_

Breyolt tapped his foot idly, but Glottina ate the words and the sounds like so much pudding, even conducting with her delicate lace fan. It was not an overstatement to say that despite an audience of merely two, Ollamayne was provided with the deepest adoration and the greatest hatred imaginable. Breyolt held his tongue as it leapt about in his closed mouth, speaking his silent umbrage at being compared to property, having bloodied himself in endless warfare all his life. The glint in the antelope’s eye betrayed Ollamayne’s forethought as to the matter.

Halfway through the next verse, invariably about the superiority of Her Utmost in all things, the sudden and jarring cease of the music followed a second interruption. Where the first had been Breyolt, the second was the delivery by servants a small cart of medjools, fragrant and wrinkled like Breyolt’s increasingly dubious brow. The bongo’s singing stopped as well.

“Ah! They arrive. My dear lady, please; a token of my appreciation for gracing me as my audience.” Ollamayne bowed casually and his eyes licked the smile from Glottina’s lips.

Breyolt stomped past the two servants, casting their eyes downward the second he began to move. He prodded the doughy antelope in the chest.

“What is this nonsense?”

“An offering of dates to the lady. They are native to—”

“I well know their natal lands! I’ve spilled more blood from the people there than you’ve spilled mis-struck notes,” Breyolt sneered threateningly.

Ollamayne turned his snout gently to the right, casting his eyes with it, and then back the other way. A small smile stayed on his lips.

“A wagon of dates and you bloody well look like you’ve eaten half of them! How on earth did an ungainly gadabout like you happen across such a helping of exotic fruit? Did every woman in the whole of Anulish drop one for each one of her holes you stuffed the neck of your lute?”

“It is a cittern, Your Grace.”

“Yes, excuse me; a cistern.”

Ollamayne sat on the edge of the window box and carefully placed his instrument on a gem-colored pillow. He traced with his hoof across the fur on his neck, where the bold pattern of umber striated with white lines traveled down to the rest of his body.

“I had hoped you would ask. But first: my lady, by all means, I would be injured as from the teeth of your lover, here, should you wait one moment longer to sample my most meager of tributes.”

The servants dutifully flourished the cart into Glottina’s reach, needing nearly to press it against her. To her delight, she found that the medjools were already dusted with sugar and eagerly scooped a handful, marring her white glove in the sticky ooze that surrounded and filled them. The pits had been painstakingly removed over the course of several hours by the servants, who, consisting of squirrel and raccoon, had not been able to so much as lick their fingers during the process. Glottina discovered this when she bit into one and, to her delight, found it as effortless to chew as a bit of fondant. This hastened greatly her consumption of the jamlike, sweet fruits.

“Now,” Ollamayne continued, and he became animated as he spoke of his exploits, “the siroccos had passed through the desert outside Anulu just days prior to my arrival. I knew the throats of the female kind as parched of thirst as their wells were dry. Not a dry well in all the city would do. My heart wept such tears that I knew could fill the void left by drought and—”

“Spare me your lyrical lackadaisy and do attempt not to pepper this yarn with embellishments that would make the court tailor blush at their flamboyance.”

Ollamayne sneered briefly, the look so fleeting Breyolt was unsure he saw it. “Of course. The city’s administrator—”

“A fine title for a warlord.”

“Indeed, and that is finer still for my present company. This man knew of me and those I call my friends. That of Her Utmost and of the court sorcerer. He threw himself upon my feet as I ate figs in a grove with three of his daughters. Or were there four? ‘Help me!’ he pleaded, grabbing at my neck and drawing his knife with what I can only imagine was a gesture of desperation. It is my natural disposition to assist others, so I offered my services to summon the rain and free the land from the spell of cracking drought.”

Breyolt rolled his head on his shoulders. “And so you played your obnoxious ditty, pretended to affect some great and powerful magic through the pointless twirling of your fingers, and were rescued from the certain death they would have visited on you had it not begun raining halfway through some bloviating low about swollen clouds like women’s bodices.”

Ollamayne finally allowed himself to grin, but it was a sheepish one. “You know me far, far too well Your Grace. Would that I accompanied you to your last battle, I heard it was horrendously bloody and I have been cultivating a rhyme involving blood and cud… Ah, but I heard she was a deer. Do deer chew cud?”

“Constantly,” Glottina said, muffled significantly by a mouthful of dates.

“You would have wasted your words. The dead have no reason to be remembered. They do not thank us when we remember them. And the souls of rebellious are destroyed forever by Her will.”

Ollamayne nodded. “As you say.”

Breyolt had trotted over to Glottina and arrived just in time to prod a medjool into her mouth.

“Glottie, as ravishing as ever. Slow down, girl, you’re going to choke—well now. I just got déjà vu.” He murmured to evade acknowledging Ollamayne as present in the room. Glottie smiled prettily and flapped her lashes.

“ _I saw such delicacies sink / Into her before I could blink / And despite her elegant clothes / She is well balanced on her toes…”_

Ollamayne bit his lip, his eyebrows arching as he leaned to see where Breyolt whispered into Glottina’s ear.

He heard Glottina’s reply. “For you, Breyolt, I could spare an evening and the day after. I remember having difficulty walking after—”

“Yes, thank you, Glottie. Ollamayne, will you be so kind as to leave us that we might, ah, enjoy the memory of your music more than its presence?”

Ollamayne groused a collection of four-letter words and rose from his seat, his tail tossing about. Breyolt took him around the shoulder and walked him toward the open door of the bedchambers, where he deposited him.

“Do find in your travels a long and treacherous road before you return, bard.”

Ollamayne spoke with his hands what he could not have said in refined company. “The next time you’re called into battle, I’ll play a prelude as you draw your sword. Many here beg me to weave tales of your work, yet I have only seen it once.”

“You’ll see it again if you aren’t careful. Away, poet; I’ve my pleasures to take.”

“Are you certain I could not compose a ballad after being myself a witness?”

“Quite certain. Now, piss off.”


	6. Orlei's Origin - Side Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Readers who comment on chapters were given the privilege of voting for a character who would have a side-story. This small chapter features the winner of that vote, who appeared originally in chapter three.

Orlei cast her eyes downward toward the floor of the carriage and sighed. The dress was particularly constraining, especially if she was expected to dance in it. It was to be her first attendance to the court of the All-Queen as a princess and an official representative of her country. Though her own mother was a queen, the disparity was clear to everyone in the world. Queen Holdst reigned in her court of the Land of Lakes, Felaurna, with opulence such that the year’s wages for a peasant working in a typical merchant’s employ would not be able to purchase a single plate of the sort of food that was eaten there. And that was before sumptuary laws were considered, which by design had stood in place for centuries and ensured no one without worthy blood could make ostentatious displays of wealth. The merchant class, as of late, could skirt the laws if they were particularly respected. Where the opulence of the Felaurna court made hedonists blush, the All-Queen held such parties and balls on a nightly basis that all other royals were shamed into an acute knowledge of their inferiority to her.

So many stories had been told to Orlei that she approached the idea of spending any time whatsoever in Aurelina’s court as one of terrifying import and perilousness. The idea that the famed bard Ollamayne would be in attendance did little to placate her. The carriage was due to reach the palace of the All-Queen in the next hour and a half and Orlei had grown tired of the fitful bumping of the wheels over the immaculately paved roads. The tightly joined stones did little to assuage the ride, and this upset Orlei more than she thought it might. Was this all to mock her, a swan, for using land to travel? She stroked the white feathers about her chest and neck, feeling the pearls there with her wings and finding some modicum of relief. She was meant to be there in the court. She was worthy and she was far more beautiful than her sister, who rotted away back in Felaurna studying “economics” or whatever nonsense.

After a brief nap the voices of crowds awoke her. The road was cleared for the carriages of the nobility, but the bourgeoise crowded in throngs along the sides just to catch a glimpse of the superior stock as it passed before them in gilded carriages hung with wreaths and lengths of fabric tied with taffeta ribbon. Though the sun had set as Her Utmost had willed (it and not a moment earlier), beams of light emanating from cauldrons on the palace grounds cut the night sky like the blades of a shear. Despite herself, Orlei hurriedly undid the clasps on the carriage window and stuck out her graceful neck. The towers and their pinnacles soared over the outer wall, which shone as if a mirror reflecting the night in the brilliant tan stone. Like spear tips dipped in blood did the red roofs pierce the sky, illuminated by magical lights casting a glow up from under them.

Orlei gawked like a common peasant. She quickly tucked her head in and latched the window shut. She told herself that it would be just an evening of bowing and head-nodding the likes of which she had to learn sooner or later. There was a stone of woe sitting in her stomach – how could she, who had always been bowed to, be expected to bow before another? But, this was the All-Queen, and she would have to swallow her pride and learn to fight the waves of nervous self-deprecation roiling within her heart. She adjusted the strings on her corset and fluffed the trail of her dress. It was rare for her to wear yellow, but it had been her mother’s insistence. Yellow was a sign of friendship, and the Felaurna court desperately needed to maintain good relations with the capitol. Another misstep and Orlei’s father, who was executed before a banquet last year, would not be the only casualty of a strained vassal state.

The carriage finally came to a stop before the main building within the walls of the castle. Lights shone in the windows and the entire bailey was lit with beautiful bonfires and vertical beams of light. A crowd of guards and servants opened her door and guarded her as she held up her skirt and walked in dainty crystal slippers up the steps leading to the palace entrance. The formality was chief among present qualities of the event and Orlei frequently had to hide her shocked expression at the presence of so many beautifully cultivated flowers and carved statues, all physical praises of the All-Queen. Upon nearing the entrance to the waiting hall Orlei heard the sounds of talking and laughing and other, far ruder sounds.

Orlei heard her name announced. “The illustrious Orlei Holdst, Princess of Felaurna!” She was welcomed by brief applause, but those gathered in the hall were far too inebriated and concerned with their conversations to pay the slender swan much mind. The figures of the gathered nobles were enormous in their disparity. Some were like her and others were like boulders blocking the road, except these boulders ate and caroused and spilled their drinks when they clapped each other on the shoulder. She attempted to slip through the crowd further in, where she expected dancing and refreshments.

The grand hall was filled with music and conversation the likes of which Orlei had never heard. The music tickled her senses; the sound of a graceful cittern being played for somewhere high above the floor. There atop a pedestal she spied a slender bongo with long horns and a cheerful countenance. Though he played like an angel, his eyes wandered eagerly down to the uncovered cleavages of the women in attendance like a hawk spying its prey. Next to Orlei, a broad-bodied fox in pale green jacket and pantaloons filled a plate from one of the banquet tables. He was picking up things and examining them, then either placing them on his plate or back on the table. As he did, he talked with a thick accent.

“Zhey joost announced ze princesse Feloorna mais Je cannot see her! Do you suppose she is wearing ragz and does not stand out?”

The fox’s chocolate-colored ears twitched as huge wolf nearly a head taller than him responded. Orlei glimpsed the wolf, all gray and mature, his dress uniform and surcoat decorated in medals, and covered her mouth with a wing to avoid gasping out loud. Men of such handsome appearance existed here in the capitol? Why had she never come until now?

“Princesses are shy beings before She gets their hands on them, remember? I have never seen a Felaurnan princess, but I’m sure she’s as graceful and pretty as a winter flake. Once she gets a taste of the palace she’ll be spoiled for everything else.”

Orlei fumed and despite her urge to maintain a genteel and soft-spoken lady, it seemed things were different in the capitol.

“To talk of a princess as she passes before your very eyes! Good sirs, do endeavor not to choke as you gossip so!”

The wolf glanced up and the fox turned like a glacier in the sea. His belly, taut in a tan vest and the tucked into the front of his pants, brushed against her and she took a step backward.

“I do apologize,” the old wolf laughed, “I realize now that you have the bearing of royalty. Your highness, please forgive this old soldier, for he composes himself poorly in the realm of polite conversation.”

“All is forgiven,” Orlei said with a hint of blush.

“Then all is well! I am Adalhert Selfridge, Duke of Linalita.” The wolf bowed his head briefly, but perhaps it was merely to search the table for another cut of bloody meat.

“Et Je,” said the fox, sneering on the side of his face that bore a beauty mark on the cheek, “am Gulliver LeGrand, Duc d’Aureléans.” His hand, festooned with rings, outstretched and Orlei kissed one of them obediently. To meet men of such rank!

“Apologies for my outburst, your graces, I knew not in whose presence I stood. You are both… extravagant sorts, just as I have heard She likes it.”

Adalhert had grabbed a rare steak in his clawed hand and was tearing at it like a rabid beast. His lace cravat caught the dripping drool and bloody juice. He caught her words mid-chew and nodded. Meanwhile, Gulliver excused himself and headed over to another table, where there were different canapes arranged in little artful patterns. Orlei closed the distance between her and the table next to which Adalhert stood. The space in front of her, where Gulliver had been, was entirely picked through and resembled a map of the word done in stains and smears of jam and frosting, crème and coulis.

“You have not yet made her acquaintance, I trust?” Adalhert asked abruptly.

“No. Not yet.” And Orlei replied with unease.

Chortling now the wolf resisted the urge to clap her on the back. “You shall but soon, my dear! If you’re a princess, she’ll want you where you’re easy to reach. See the stairs there, between the pedestals? She’ll arrive soon; you’d better be there for her when she comes.”

Orlei glanced to the cascade of carpeted steps and at the beautifully carved banisters of white and rose gold. She trembled slightly as at their apex she imagined the All-Queen, whose statues and portraits she had seen – for they existed in every land. She had in her youth spend a great deal of time studying them with a mixture of awe and fear. She found her beauty to be otherworldly, and for a time she wanted to look more like Aurelina than like her own mother. Orlei’s mother, in service to the Queen’s decrees, had become closed off to the world and spent her time commissioning ever more elaborate glass sculptures and ensuring the fisheries produced up to need. She also dallied in physical many physical indulgences. Time spent with her meant time spent with a woman who valued her arts and her responsibilities more than her daughters.

With an uncharacteristically deep bow, Orlei paid her respects to Adalhert and headed toward the stairs, where there was some open space at the base of them; a half-circle of two steps making a large dais on the polished floors. At the base of this dais the floors were empty of guests, but there was no line to demarcate this display of etiquette. Orlei wondered how they all knew. She passed a group of chemists in vertically striped pantaloons and dresses who talked heatedly of formulas and something called “molecules” until she was on the edge of the crowd. At that moment, the string music stopped and a host of brass instruments and flutes blew to announce the arrival of the All-Queen, the living goddess who ruled all things.

Orlei watched as She, austere, her countenance and her eyes not moving in the slightest, descended the stairs. Each step of her dainty, uncovered paws sent gentle wobbling up her thighs. She held her hands in a particular fashion – her right gripped the handle of a luxuriously bejeweled and sculpted hand mirror, and her left sat in a gentle curl some ways out from her wide waist. Like a jeweler’s window did her bust of necklaces and her crown of gold twinkle in the magical light of the chandeliers high above the floor. Beside and behind the All-Queen a retinue of courtiers, her camarilla, descended with her. An overstuffed coyote with a sword on his belt. A beautiful and underdressed springbok with the curvature of a dancer, her hips broad and thighs powerful. Between those two there was a thin figure, a lovely little marten in a breastplate and pants, walking jauntily with her head held high.

The crowd was silent. Orlei could hear her heart beating. The gathered nobles, loose as their manners were, even had the forethought to avoid farting for the twenty seconds it took Aurelina to descend to the dais and survey them.

“Those gathered,” she spoke, and Orlei felt her heart flutter, “We welcome you. In Our capacity as All-Queen, We have seen fit to provide for you all that is required to fill your stomachs and entertain you otherwise. Do seek company with one another. We shall select a new member of Our camarilla this day.”

The silence that followed her brief address felt heavier than that before. Orlei could still hear the All-Queen’s voice in her mind, the lilting tones that of a throat that had never known illness or age. Before she could react to what was happening, Orlei saw her descend from the last two steps and cross the floor directly toward her.

“You are my chosen,” she cooed in sotto voce, “enjoy the festivities. Eat, drink, and be loyal to me or I will erase you from existence. Your own mother will know she had but one daughter.”

Aurelina spoke as she passed the swan and then, turning a circle around the edge of the crowd, returned to a dais where two well-built servants rushed to place a thronelike palanquin. She slowly and gracefully seated her round pear of a posterior and rested her hands on the armrests, each ending in a claw gripping a sphere representing creation. It was as if she hadn’t spoken at all, for the banquet continued as it had, albeit with a nervous tone to the panoply of voices.

Orlei resisted the urge to run from the palace. She had to be careful – if she left a crystal slipper behind, it was doubtless all would know she failed, if they knew she existed at all after being… ‘erased.’ She threaded her way through the crowd toward the exit, but someone caught her by the arm. His grip was iron and she a fragile piece of brittle toffee. Despite her squirming, he had her. She smelled him before she turned around, his aroma of male musk coming with a ferrous tinge. When she did see him, his grinning teeth surprised her and she attempted to pull away. He let her go and put his hands on his hips, one of which held a holster with flintlock inside.

“Your Highness, if you leave, she’ll kill you. You’re part of her little coterie now.” He was a handsome, trim young wolf with stone grey fur and yellow eyes. “Breyolt Selfridge, Marquess of Linalita.” His brief introduction came and went like a highwayman in the night.

“My lord, do take care not to touch me. Your father will hear of it. I just met him.”

Breyolt chortled and slapped a knee, replying, “but how can I resist? My father will forgive my dalliances, so many are his.” Despite all the poise with which she was raised, Orlei hid her pink cheeks behind a wing.

“What is it you want? To mock me? It is my first visit to the capitol and you seek to mock me. And what else, my lord? To—”

“To bed you, should my exercise in saving your life succeed. Come. And relax, you’re too tense to be a princess.”

Breyolt wrapped his arm around her waist and squeezed her thigh as he guided her to a relatively untouched table of food. Orlei was shocked as she took stock of it all. From one end of the table to the other a plethora of dishes hid nearly every inch of the purple and gold tablecloth. Quarters of wild stag, well marbled, spread over one end of the table and from that side onward were chickens stuffed with minced liver, lard, boiled eggs and myriad spices. Dozens of darioles, each the size of her head, sat towered upon trays ascending a foot above the table. Her eyes swept further over the spread and she smelled the sturgeon in vinegar, the great wheels of cheese, the puff pastries with their cloying bounty of berries in sweet sauce. Again, she found her etiquette crippled by the brilliant displays of the capitol, and drooled.

“Go on then. Do as she ordered. Am I to help you with even that?” Breyolt, playfully and with good humor, plucked up a fluffy dariole smothered with crème and topped with strawberries, then pressed it against Orlei’s beak. She flinched in surprise but took a bite. All the others were doing it that way, she had noticed. She ate out of the wolf’s hand like a captive animal and the molten syrup that poured from the body of the spongecake spilled down her neck and turned her feathers red as fresh blood.

“It,” she gasped for air, a diver coming up to breathe, “is delicious! I have not ever tasted such delicacy! The flavor of the fruit is more profound here than it is on the bush!” Orlei dropped all pretenses like so many hot irons and took to the table the way a starving woman would. Her wings gathered up fish that she dipped into her mouth, pulling out only bones. She licked her lips of vinegar and lemon juice and tried some of the chicken – exquisite, and not at all disturbing for her, an avian. The way she scooped the stuffing out of the remainder of the carcass reminded those around her of a hog rooting around in a trough for those last bits of scraps. Breyolt, who was close to her, could already see her dress straining about the middle.

“My dear, you take to this,” Breyolt said, tearing hunks of cheese from a wheel for her to eat with manchet, “like a swan to the river. Just see that you do not block the whole river too quickly. These things take time, and time makes them all the sweeter.”

“First a rogue,” Orlei spoke intermittently between mouthfuls and deep indulging swallows of roasted game and samples from platters of figs, pies that sat in concentric rings on larger pies as their canvasses, “now a philosopher? Spare me your poetry and pass me the salted pork.” When he did, she gobbled it up. Her own appetite, as she saw it from inside her head, reminded her of her mother. That made her feel proud. She refused to be gawked at like she was some kind of oddity, some willowy foreign presence at which to scoff. What had been an ethereal experience outside her own body had become one of purpose. She took what the All-Queen ordered as a challenge, and she never backed down from a challenge. She would be queen of Felaurna someday. Being fuller figured than her sister would give her an edge in finding a king, of that she was sure.

“Breyolt,” she declared his name more than spoke it, then paused to hear her dress creak before continuing, “once I succeed in attaining what Her Utmost desires of me, I should like very much to find your company with mine in some private place.” She had stuffed herself so much that her trim belly pushed out visibly further than it had that morning. Any more and her dress would split seams, and though she didn’t realize it, many of the guests had their eyes on her. She was the All-Queen’s chosen, and she rose to the task. As she did not know the ways of the capitol, she did not know of all the men and women who had been chosen in the past and failed under the pressure. And she did not know whether or not the Queen’s punishment had been meted out upon them. Orlei had an advantage in not conceptualizing the horror of the fate that may have awaited her, despite Breyolt’s warnings.

“As you wish, your highness. I’ll see to it that we ascertain the endurance of that newly empowered body of yours.” Breyolt’s hand, dexterous and strong, ran down her side and around her back, where her tail feathers fanned out from a folded eye in the dress. He stroked them gently and took her by the waist. Orlei was pleased the wolf appreciated her, for she supposed her new life would take some adjusting of her expectations. While she finished off the last of a glass of champagne, she took a moment to think. Hadn’t she been a delicate young ingenue just before? She realized smugly that she had changed so much, and took Breyolt by the arm.


	7. Edification

The evening, as it descended into the darkness, grew passionate for Breyolt and Glottina. He struggled, as usual, with the laces of her corset, the buttons, but the fruit of his reward and that of her body was more than enough to galvanize him to a level of skill heretofore unheard of. Finally, alone with a woman in the palace, Breyolt did what he did best when he was alone with women: he explored her. He pored over every curve of her sensuality after taking the time to undress her on a divan and follow her to her bed. It had been months of combat since he last bed a woman. That, too, stimulated his manual dexterity. Glottina was no Goddess Queen, but she had filled out nicely since their last dalliance, and Breyolt had grown to appreciate that. Even he was not immune to the charms the women of the camarilla had attained through their garish indulgences. In bed, he was not a judgmental man, and Glottina was a generous lover, both in manner and padding.

Breyolt’s lips traveled down her neck and both chins, licking about them as a wolf in the evolutionary past might adorn a mate with his saliva and scent. Breyolt’s height lent him a certain mobility about the shorter frame of the portly vixen. He craned his neck around to kiss and caress spots she had forgotten she had – but Breyolt remembered. He remembered every raindrop on the pavement of her tender body. Wryly his mind drifted back to nights on the veranda at the Owl’s Claws. Summer nights where it seemed his body would evaporate into the air, and he could lick the sweat from her breasts and inhale her womanhood.

With Glottina more than any other woman – and there had been many – Breyolt had thought she might be able to satisfy him. He had needs, wordless needs he could not explain but that she met effortlessly. His carnal needs, an afterthought compared to the needs of a man who had buried his baser emotions and let his warrior’s work abscond with his civilian sensibilities. He had begun to doubt he had any such feelings. But that was before, on a chaise under the moon, the smoldering ashes of coitus behind him, he had bared his soul to her and she had listened. She had consoled him and she had been the one to save him from becoming like his father – wholly dedicated to bloodshed on behalf of their ruler, moreso to her than to Breyolt’s mother. Breyolt vacillated between a deep desire to emulate him, a great man, and a fear of what traits of his mother he would lose in the transformation.

Now, so many years after those meaningful nights, Breyolt had seen Glottina transform herself into a physical embodiment of the decadent of the All-Queen’s rule. She stuffed herself with priceless delicacies, she drank, she invited all manner of musicians so that even her ears could consume their sounds. Breyolt had wondered if her connection to him had faded since their past together ended. He did not have the fortitude or the shamelessness to ask her. Though he adored her in some combination of his past feelings and his present lusts, he disregarded her as another toy of the All-Queen. As a matter of principle, he very much liked to play with her toys.

“Breyolt.” Glottina huffed as she felt him press and part her thighs. Her attempts to squeeze them back together were in vain. “Breyolt I need just a moment to…”

Beyolt scoffed and nuzzled his snout deeper between her thighs. He expected her familiar scent, an odd mix of pastry cream and the creation-given licentious aroma of her self, and welcomed it when he found it. But there was something else.

“Stop!” Glottina finally ordered.

Breyolt was already pulling back and looked up at her stomach, which had been a heavy presence on top of his muzzle a moment prior.

“You’re sleeping with her! Her scent is all over you! And that… lipstick, on your—!” The pause of a thousand thoughts passed between them in the silent bedchamber.

“Good Godqueen, dear Glottie, you itinerant dog,” so called for the particular prurience of a few well-known dogs of ancient history, “just whose thirst is being slaked by this liaison?” He guffawed crudely in the presence of the naked woman, unheard of mirth from anyone but Breyolt. He was a combination of disbelief and charmed, awestruck respect. “Tell me! How loudly does she squeal when the tongue’s between the other lips?”

The rouge on Glottina’s powdered cheeks flashed a brighter shade of pink.

Breyolt laughed, “Grand Chamberlain indeed! Taking care of her most carnal desires and most inner of chambers!”

“Cease that guffawing. It’s not what you think.” Glottina interrupted, clucking her tongue and raising her nose in her glance away from the handsome wolf still halfway between her legs.

Breyolt, still on his knees, grunted disapprovingly and picked himself up. The shards of his shattered masculinity would take some time to recollect.

“What is it like?” he asked with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, “and how does she taste?”

Glottina found her fan somewhere in her bedsheets and opened it over her face. Peeking with one eye, she answered.

“Stay your curiosity. I haven’t the answers.”

“Posh!” Breyolt sneered. “You mean to imply the most selfish woman in creation gives of herself in bed? When she could consume you ‘til you’re spent and toss you out on your prodigious rump?”

Glottina’s hands tried to replace her words as she stumbled through the explanation. “She is… You see, Breyolt… We haven’t… I-I go through her things, and play with them, when she’s away.”

“Come now—”

“What does it matter? I can’t count on both my hands the number of liaisons you could orchestrate in this palace alone.” The singsong lilt with which she accused his loins’ wants of capriciousness further took the fire from beneath his cauldron. Her grin was visible behind the foxglove and fuchsia fabric of her fan.

“I don’t understand. Why would you do such a thing? Desperation?”

Glottina examined the creases in her fan. “As if you wouldn’t do the same. Life is as this for good reason. We want her for her beauty and poise, none are immune. At least I didn’t thrust myself upon her dais like you! You can be so hungry.”

Breyolt groaned. “That sorcerer has been lecturing to you lot like you’re schoolchildren, hasn’t he? He does all the work aggrandizing her, it’s a wonder she ever needs to self-aggrandize!” Beyolt retorted, “and few are as enamored with Her Utmost as he.”

“And why are you not, Breyolt? What has possessed you? When you were a younger man you spoke with due reverence of Her Utmost. Now you sniff about Her chambers and call Her judgments into question. You question the very foundation on which we exist through your insolence. I thought you a mature man, Breyolt, but increasingly I come to see you as an indignant pup. Only the young and foolish ever speak as you have about Her just now.”

“You are so deep into Her world that you walk upon Her ocean’s bottom. I have seen Her will in every skull I’ve split open. Have you ever walked the battlefield, Glottie? Seen the quiet supplier of sinewy rebels and well-fattened merchants alike, prepared and cooked so that you can eat them at her nightly banquets?” Glottina’s eyes began to dart this way and that as Breyolt went on. “Are you so inured to this shedding of blood that you forget from whence the meat arrives? With every legion of infantry I command, I must include a retinue of battlefield cuisinaries to gather the bodies of the dead not too destroyed by pikes, swords, and firearms. Shipped off are these fresh vittles packed in salt to every sufficiently ennobled kitchen. This consumption, all of it. Just as when we crouched in the grass and hunted it ourselves. Perhaps we could be better, but perhaps Her Bloated Imperiousness wills it as she has willed the lives and deaths of our kind from time immemorial.”

Glottina held her breath for a moment, then replied in a quiet voice.

“Go, Breyolt. Go now before we are both struck down. You don’t understand why things need to be this way. To speak against her so…”

“I do think I understand. She has yet to do so, and if she can hear me, then she refrains from some other reason. I intend to understand that reason.”

Breyolt rose to his full height and arched his back. He swung his shoulders around and picked his doublet up off Glottina’s sweat-soaked bedsheets. He adjusted the buckle on his pants with great difficulty as his tumescence lingered and gathered up his medallion on which was emblazoned the mercilessly aloof profile of Her Utmost. The same old expression; he checked.

“It’s good that you’re on her side. Next time, get me some of the oil she puts on her—"

“That will be enough, Breyolt.” Glottina glanced forlornly at the flaccid indications from his codpiece. “When you change your mind, when you apologize on bended knee for all this madness… If I can wait that long… We will reconvene and finish each other.” She bit her lip.

“Spare the rod, spoil the woman.” Breyolt muttered over his shoulder, dejected thoughts of his own spared rod his only company as he made his way out of the chamberlain’s apartments and toward his own.

\--

Breyolt found the room he was borrowing as he had left it. His sword atop the bed. The signs of the bath tub having been filled earlier were obvious in the damp sheen on it. He lit the candles one by one to bring light into the room, eschewing the need for servants to do everything. Why should they? He could get around easily unlike most of his cohort, those so ‘beloved’ by Her Utmost. Breyolt also liked privacy when he could get it. It was something of a rarity, one of the few resources that was scarce in the palace of plenty. He would not find it yet.

“Your Grace,” Lucius muttered as he emerged from the shadows the last candle dissipated. How on earth his presence was missed initially was left to Breyolt’s imagination. “Don’t look so twisted up. I have come to share knowledge. To break bread.”

“Wind, surely.”

Lucius put his claw on his cravat and feigned indignance, “I wouldn’t give you the honor.”

Breyolt turned his head so far, his neck cracked, then flopped onto the bed where he unsheathed his sword and examining the fuller down the center of the blade. Not a single night bird chirped outside the open window.

“I have had enough grandstanding for one day, warlock. While I balk at the thought of forcibly ejecting you from the room, I will not hesitate to make an attempt if I have to prod your backside with this blade to get you moving.”

Lucius laughed as credibly as he could. “Now, now. I came here to expand upon our previous discussion. I thought, perhaps, Your Grace could do with a bit of schooling, even if it does come too late in his life to do much good…” With flair Lucius reached beside the bed where he had placed a board. It was covered in strange shapes of curling ink pressed deep as if burned into the surface. “This will explain much about Her Utmost.”

“What is to be explained? All I desire to know are her motivations. And the shape of her mound.”

Trundling with some difficulty, Lucius made his way to the foot of the bed and cast the board into the air where it languidly floated as if hung in water. The overstuffed beast sniffed and flared his nostrils for a moment, then stopped.

“It is upon this board that I have written my memories of the places and times she has shown me. You see—”

A knock on the door. Lucius made attempts to speak through it, but Breyolt roared “Enter!” in a shockingly loud voice. In fact, the wolf spun his legs off the bed, his feet still clod in sabatons and boots, and clapped them heavily on the floor. He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his hands together. “My dinner! Break bread, you say, Lucius? Why not meat?” And there was meat. An emotionless servant with an ear cocked to the side wheeled in a serving cart of silvery metal upon which a cloche hid the obvious choice for a northerner like Breyolt. Lifted, the glistening red meat appeared like a ruby in a box, an engagement ring for Breyolt’s stomach. The servant bowed lightly and produced an egg of a rare bird with extravagant plumage from beneath a white, embroidered kerchief. He cracked it lightly on the side of the dish and let it slip in white and gold onto the meat. It seemed to Lucius that the servant, slender as almost all of them were, lingered a bit too long at the sight of the culinary masterpiece he had brought.

“That will be all,” Breyolt said from the corner of his mouth as he lifted and inspected the bottle of wine on the side. A quick glance below revealed several more on the cart’s bottom rungs. The servant all but vanished. “A wondrous red from Aurléans. Long may LeGrand reign. As long he keeps the claret flowing.” Breyolt’s throat rumbled in a fashion like a purr as he corked the wine with his jaws and drank straight from the bottle.

Lucius, dumbfounded, looked on as Breyolt sniffed the large single piece of meat, still dripping with blood and juices.

“Is that all you eat? Where are the pastries? The tarts?”

“I need only tartare.” Breyolt grinned fiendishly and set the silverware aside. He picked at the meat gracelessly, tearing it with his bare claws and letting it and the egg sink into his fur and under his nails. “Delightful,” he rejoiced, “truly delightful…” and he placed chunks of the meat in his slavering jaws, staining his black lips red. “It seems these coddled palace chefs can achieve excellent raw meat given sufficient instruction. I rarely find it so readily available. You all char your meat here, but I am used to running an army. I give my rations to my men and my women and those unconcerned by such labels, those who want only to be warriors, so that they do not starve.”

Lucius waited for Breyolt to swallow; a long, long time while the wolf savored his meal. “You see, I have no need for rations during my campaigns. I find my meal on the battlefield, when I have time. I have become increasingly adept in staining the crests and livery of my dukedom in the blood of unworthy filth as I separate the fur and flence the fat. Only, on the battlefield, I can never find any fresh eggs!” Breyolt laughed freely and licked blood from his fingers.

“I appreciate all food,” Lucius snorted primly, “as long as it is decadent.” Lucius had taken his dinner, but watching Breyolt eat again set his overstuffed gut, which could fill a merchant’s cart, to rumbling. “I appreciate your dedication to what you desire; it is as She would have wanted, but to imagine the vulgarity of Your Grace on his knees burrowing his claws into the dead…”

“And dying,” Breyolt corrected superficially.

Lucius waddled to the window and pushed it open further, his claws squeaking on the panes of pristine glass. He spied a dining party below in the gardens and turned his head toward the moon. Eyes closed and fingers curling in arcane motions, he availed himself of their wine and chiffon cakes by swirling them up an invisible, controlled current of air. When he turned back to Breyolt he was grasping an open bottle of wine by the neck and a tray of cakes in his other hand.

“Now, about our Queen…”

“Stuff it, Lucius. I have waited for this dish all day. I have struggled to communicate its preparation to the chefs, who seem to adhere religiously to their overwrought methods. I will finish it before we speak further.” Breyolt tucked himself back into his meal, lubricating each wet hunk of meat with several gulps of rich, bitter wine. Lucius, patient as long as he had food of his own, sat by the window and enjoyed the snack he had taken from other, less deserving members of the court. For a time, only the sounds of eating and drinking passed between them.  Each was pleased to be free of the sound of the other’s voice. Breyolt, happily savoring each bite of his steak, lowered his snout and licked his plate clean, then his fingers, then his lips.

“A fine, fine steak.” Breyolt rumbled, picking his teeth. “And a fine wine. Now, would you look at that; I find myself more agreeable to your lectures, sorcerer, now that my stomach is full.”

Lucius nodded, “I see Your Grace does know how to eat after all.”

Breyolt shot him a grin and set down the bottle of wine he was holding, polished off. “For me, it is a pleasure. For you, slavery. Is it not so?”

“I derive much pleasure from eating, particularly in Her company… Why else would I be so bloody fat?”

“Funny, I could swear you said eating, but now we’re talking about masturbation?”

Lucius made a scowl and hid his face behind the bottle. Breyolt derided him with a jeering scoff. This went on for a moment more before the dragon composed himself and went back to the board hanging in the air.

“Now then. My lecture.”

“Here we are with it. Speak then, wizard.” Breyolt crossed his legs in a flat position on the bed and sat with his head in his hand, his elbow boring boredly into his knee.

Lucius ignored him like he might rowdy schoolboy and took to the board with his claws. “This here. Does Your Grace read many history books?” A momentary bout of dyspepsia followed his question, and he grit his teeth wincing.

“I read what my schoolmasters at Cvaravald required of me and not a word more. That was many years ago, when I was a boy. I fancied martial pursuits; as you can see by my rough exterior and the scars peeking from my sleeves, I am not a scholar. The lack of ink on my fingers, you see,” and Breyolt held up his hands, “was another hint.”

Lucius smiled mysteriously. “Then you have much to learn. Briefly, I will attempt to fill vast holes of information, but I fear in the cases of some students this is often as futile as satisfying Her Utmost’s need for adulation.” He raised his hand to beg for silence when Breyolt began to protest, then continued, “for time everlasting, Her Utmost has ruled. She has been always unchanged. There have been described in the libraries dedicated to her grandeur ten thousand civilizations before ours. They have come and gone as the sun rises and sets, as she has commanded, as she has overseen. Rise and fall, like the tide before Her moons. Rise and fall, Breyolt.”

Breyolt nodded, feigning attentiveness.

“For every civilization we are aware of, there are countless others. You see, our Queen is more than a timeless being. To describe Her accurately would be to describe all that we do not understand, measuring it in comparison to what little we know about the workings of the world. She is everything. Her hands, Her mind, it all shapes our world. Ah, and not just our world. Every world. Those stars in the sky are as far away as you can imagine, and still Her influence bridges the gap as easily as you step over a cobblestone. To say she is a Goddess is to err. It is she who commands Gods, who uses them as she uses us, to her will. The names of subordinate deities line the pages of her libraries, each of the purposes of which carefully logged by great scholars of old. Learned men who…”

“Whom you long to surpass, I can tell. Your want of her affection shows as readily as your skin, bulging out of your outfit as it is. What is it you are trying to do – instill rightful fear in me? Let me explain this once and be done with it: any fear of her that I possess is quelled into torpor by the lust I have for her body. You want her approval, well,” Breyolt laughed, “that I can do without! I only want her! Approval be damned, Lucius, if there is a way I can have her I must know it. If you are so well studied then you will know of a way.”

Lucius was quiet for a moment, and then his lips curled into a smile. “I love to see foolish men rushing to their deaths. All who love Her as you do… have never been nearly as vocal about it. You are a walking heretic. You are begging at Her altar to be destroyed.”

“I am begging at her altar for drops of nectar, but I will not beg much longer. When next I see her, I shall…” Breyolt closed his eyes. “Tell me.”

“Oh, certainly, Your Grace.” Lucius returned to his honorifics and his measured tone. “Her Utmost has no weaknesses, she feels no need. She is a virgin Queen, as you well know.”

“Her body is unspoiled but I have heard there are those who wish her tongue was occupied otherwise.” Breyolt grinned, and Lucius stared at him in disbelief. The sorcerer could not believe she would be intimate with anyone if she had not been with him.

“Those paintings in the halls are not creations of the artists’ minds. They are glimpses into other realities that she shows them, and they go mad painting them. They must paint them or the trauma will wrack their bodies and chew them from the inside out. She has such power,” Lucius huffed, growing red about the cheeks as he spoke with eager reverence about the All-Queen, “such power that we cannot fathom it. I have walked upon other firmaments and I have seen more, I daresay, of her truth than any other scholar or practitioner of magic, present or past.

You Grace, I could show you a glimpse, but I find you woefully underprepared. It would not do to harm your personage by making foolish excursions into the places she has shown me. But even in military academy the babes – I beg your pardon – soldiers, are instructed as to the facts of our universe. Stars, planets, galaxies, and so on, roughly, as we examine them in our telescopes. I will tell Your Grace, we are neighbors to universes like ours, resting in multiverses sprung from different choices. Every thought and action, or inaction, spawns another. Those multi-verses are entombed in omni-verses which represent every possible past and future. Allow me to draw a line,” and he did, in the air a burning line of red glowing material like a smelted rod, “that is our linear universe. These branching lines… These are the branches of our multi-verse. Now, coming toward Your Grace on the Z axis, dimension is added further – time – and I need merely state these three dimensions are all that we can comprehend. Space and all within it, possibility, and time. She goes beyond all this. So far beyond that it is pointless to attempt comparisons.”

Breyolt sat motionless, calmly digesting and ruminating on the bouquet of the wine he had quaffed like water. He waited for a time after Lucius finished before speaking again.

“Well put, very well put. You demonstrate effectively your knowledge. Are you, perhaps, attempting to deter me from an early death? Filling my head with stories about her power so that I cow myself back down to obsequiousness? Don’t answer, don’t even open your mouth. Stuff another cake into it to give me some time to speak. I don’t care a whit about her power. I know she can kill me. She can kill me without relying on arcane mysteries and the secrets of the universe because, with a wave of her manicured hand, she can beset me with so many guards that even I know to drop my weapon. And then she can have me tortured and flayed. But I don’t care. I want her more than I fear torture and death – and I will find a way to have her.”

Lucius wiped his claws on his jacket and placed the empty wine bottle on an adjacent table. His thick tail whipped in circles about the tip, anger and disgust and pity swam through him.

“Your Grace chases accolades with the errant enthusiasm of a man half his age. Want, want, want. To conquer is not everything. To live in luxury and comfort and entertainment is enough for most. Most, Your Grace.”

Breyolt saw the unsheathed blade sitting on the bed and stared at it. “To speak man to man to a Duke. I admire that, Lucius.”

Lucius made his way to the door and made a show of opening and closing it, or perhaps second thoughts guided his hands.

“Upon your pillow sits a spell of sight through dreams. Sleep and you will be educated further. Do not start or balk, it shall relegate itself only to the confines of your mind. And Breyolt, if you find a way –  if you find a way to have her – save the scraps for me.”

\--

Miasma, like ash, clawed at Breyolt’s fur and nostrils. His mucous membranes stung as he struggled to raise his eyes. He was not in bed, wrapped in covers and surrounded by wine bottles. He was standing upon a precipice, a thin sliver of black rock overlooking creation, or so the word entered his mind. He could not see stars, only black, only purple light, only. The sounds he heard echoed a furnace and an army in tandem, but they were far away. Closer he heard the wind rushing but faster, angrier than ever. He blinked and saw worlds in the distance, spheres of all colors and stars far greater in size, capitulating to the pull of some greater gravity. White and black passed in rivulets encircling the sky all around him. In them, spinning whirlpools of sparkling stars and objects. Blinking black and white, black and white in faster and faster rhythm and odd syncopation. He felt himself pushed onto his knees and the ground felt hard, rocks and pebbles digging into the balls of his knees as his back arched downward from the pressure. All the vortices above him disappeared into a single point in the distance, or did they come from it?

“All submits, even you, even now,” cooed her voice in syrupy notes.

\--

“Breyolt Selfridge, Duke of Linalita,” a voice and a start jolted Breyolt from his sleep. The morning sun revealed his nudity and caused an acute throbbing of his head that the noise of the voice did not assist in dissipating. “You are hereby arrested for treason, sedition, and other nameless crimes.” It was Carmot speaking, her glare betraying nothing of any inner turmoil, if indeed she felt any. Crossed over Breyolt’s neck were the curving blades of a pair of halberds, held by a pair of guards, faceless in their bascinets.

“Carmot, in my own bed? Bloody fucking timing.” Breyolt looked between the armed guards, whose rotund statures made escape unfeasible unless he fancied being crushed between two walls of plated armor. He raised his hands up. “Come on, boys, give a man a few inches. I’m going to need at least twelve.”

Carmot rested her hand on the basket of her sword. It was decorated not with a family crest, not with sigils, but of barren ornamentation befitting her humble beginnings.

“I merely enforce the order of the palace, Your Grace. I enforce the commands of the All-Queen. I make this arrest not on my behalf, but on hers.”

“At least let me put my trousers on,” Breyolt muttered, reaching one hand down to the sword wrapped up in the bedsheets. He was glad to have slept with it, half drunk; and to think he had decided sleeping with swords to be out of his purview. With one hand he seized the haft of the halberd to his right and caught the other with the crossguard of the sword. Fighting their downward pushing for just long enough, Breyolt rolled downward, retreating both his hand and his sword so that the halberd blades struck right where they would have beheaded him had he not moved. While the guards struggled to extricate their polearms from the wooden bedframe beneath the mattress, Breyolt lunged at Carmot and fell on her before she could draw her sword. They crashed to the ground and he pinned her arms, but nausea found him and he groaned loudly first, then even louder when the marten buried her knee in his naked crotch.

They rolled, turning over each other. Breyolt, owing to his greater strength, tossed Carmot off him before she could bite one of his ears off. She knocked against a wooden table, displacing it and sending an empty wine bottle tumbling into her lap. She caught it and made a bewildered face before starting up after Breyolt, who was dangling halfway out the window with his sword clenched between his teeth, his tail flitting about desperately between his kicking legs.

One of the guards let her halberd drop and turned, though impaired by her armored physique. Breyolt felt the heavy steel of a gauntlet grip one of his ankles and he barked furiously. Carmot climbed onto his back as the guard held him and took the sword he had clenched in his teeth by the handle.

“Any further resistance, I’ll pull this sword out and widen your smile significantly.”

“Ay ‘aite ih ‘oo ‘rong.” Breyolt slurred around a mouthful of steel.

“If you want to find out if I can open the rest of your head like that gaping maw of yours, I should like to test my strength. ‘Ey, Breyolt? I’ve been doing a lot of things right-handed these days.”

“’Ry ih.” Breyolt sneered.

Carmot’s laughter shook Breyolt below her. “You’re going to bet your life? It’s been three years since sparred regularly – that little tousle earlier notwithstanding. You’re betting on a great unkown.” She pulled at the sword hilt experimentally. “Freya, grab the bastard’s other leg before he kicks us down three stories.”

The guard behind them obeyed and yanked Breyolt with surprising strength, pulling him back in so that only his hands gripped the window sill. He tensed and gagged, fighting greatly the impulse to vomit down the palace wall. The urge caused him to spit out the sword, and he watched it fall out of sight before he collapsed back into the room.

“Let us take this wine-soaked buffoon to the dungeons. Drag him if you have to.”


	8. The Manner of Magic - Side Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was done as a birthday gift for my boyfriend. Herein his character, Lucius Hargrave, Sorcerer to the Court, features prominently.

Kneeling. He had spent so much time kneeling lately. His right arm was crossed over his chest, the other nervously fidgeting with the hem of his robe. Before him sat the All-Queen, and they were alone in a small anteroom he had hoped were her private chambers. Not so, just a sitting room. A few couches and chairs with upholstery patterned after pale roses, a chandelier, a fireplace, and no windows. Not even maids or guards occupied the room or any adjacent room. The air was thick with the quiet urgency of his being there. In the relative darkness, the shapes of furniture looked like beasts, looming, waiting to tear his throat out if his composure faltered for even a moment. Aurelina awaited his answer.

“His son has entered the academy at Cvaravald. If he isn’t killed for educational purposes he too shall become a notable warrior. In addition, your Utmost, there is someone else who may be of interest to you.”

“Yes? In what capacity?” Her voice traveled on waves that, when entering his perception, made his heart surge and his back tingle.

“There is a wizard who has been making a stir among the merchant class and some of the lesser nobility.”

“The easily impressed.”

“Yes. He is remarkable, I have seen, at what he does. Magic, Your Utmost, and all those who can afford his shows lick it up. I thought that Your Utmost may deem it… distasteful to have such a cult of affection arise around a commoner. And one more thing; he is a dragon.”

She rose her snout up but her eyes drifted down toward him. Her eyes, shining, piercing, traced over the curvature of his horns. One hand, covered in rings, drew back from the arm of the chair in which she sat, its upholstery as plush as hers.

“Lucius Hargrave, son of Claudius and Abigail Hargrave, soldier and enchantress, respectively. I know. I also know you are going to bring him here tomorrow. He will be at the Royal Theater in the Temple District in evening, when his show is finished, I shall have him for dinner.”

He nodded and as she swept her hand slowly upward he rose with it.

“Ollamayne, before you go, do sing that song about my eyes.”

\--

The Temple District was serenely quiet except for the soft singing of holy voices The voices of the scholar priestesses of the Order Divinum could be heard up and down the streets. Ollamayne thought they must have finished their studies for the day, as the musical tradition of the priestesses required that they only sing after their duties for the day were completed. For a moment, the bard wanted to slip into one of the temples and have another go at seducing a priestess – he had never been able to before, and that always withered his pride. They weren’t vestals, no, many of them had probably had more sex than he, for it did not matter to the Queen. He guessed they were simply so educated that his guile and charm were lost on them.

Ollamayne made his way down the torchlit streets, past the temple district and through the surrounding gardens. He was enjoying the late-hanging sun as it slowly sunk beneath the surface of the ocean far to the south. Now the streets smelled of perfume and freshly baked pastry dough, and though he wanted desperately to stop at the cart of a vendor, he pushed on. Before him, the great façade of the Royal Theater sat decorated with banners announcing the performances of the week and blazing bowls of flame that lit beautiful statues of the All-Queen in her glory. Normal crowds became throngs of people, prey and predators both, and in all manner of fabrics and styles of dress imported from across the world.

The bongo elbowed his way through groups of painted noblewomen and fat merchants with jingling coinpurses for status symbols. If only the fools realized how little their money mattered, they might realize no amount of it would free them from the endless jeopardy of their ruler’s hand. The purses might be lighter. Ollamayne considered pinching one for himself that he might purchase some refreshments or medicaments in the stairwell before the show but decided his task would best be performed lucid. He approached the ticket taker, a plump zebra with a long, braided mane and a bright smile. Her body was nearly bursting from a taut little half-dress, and Ollamayne bit his lip that he could not stop to tickle her ears with his words.

“Tickets? Oh!” The zebra barely caught herself, “Olla—”

“Shhh. Just the one, my dear lady, for company is fleeting.” She deftly punched the ticket with a metal clip and when he winked at her she giggled just long enough for him to catch a closer glimpse of her décolletage.

A dark lobby greeted him, but Ollamayne had been here many times. He had been on the stage, behind the stage, and beneath the stage inside the legs of a very flexible performer in a travelling company of ring-tailed mammals. Even in the dark, he could find his way to the boxed balcony seat to the right of the stage, where he was afforded a perfect view of the thick maroon curtain that still hung low before a full audience. Though a few stragglers filed in; a man trying to find where his handkerchief had gone; a lady whose servant retinue comprised three extra seats, all of whom had to find their way over the legs of a half-dozen indignant audience members down the aisle.

The audiences hushed words dropped, weighted, into a sea of silence as gas lamps dimmed. The show was starting. Slowly, theatrically slowly, Ollamayne observed, the curtain began to rise, revealing a lone figure. This figure, as the stage began to light up, was revealed as the performer, Lucius Hargrave, Master of the Arcane Arts. Not a single pair of hands clapped. The dragon was a rare sight, so rare that those close enough to see his features – his slate gray and leathery hide, his pointed whiskers, his long snout and teeth; floppy, almost bovine ears and fearsome red horns – were held in rapt awe. Many of them had not seen a dragon before. Briefly he adjusted his white silk gloves and ran his slender fingers through his gray hair.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, most esteemed, and Her Utmost, whose presence exists all throughout everything… I present to you, and evening of a most peculiar sort. An evening of magic and of promises. Of spells and sights the likes of which, you cannot conceive.” And as he spoke, his arched his back and reached his hands out toward the audience, eliciting gasps as sparks flew from them and swirled into elaborate magical circles hanging in the air in a glimmer of orange light. They faded as quickly as they had appeared, but their impression stayed with the audience. They were primed for the next moment when, as the slender dragon turned and his long purple frock spun with him, the stage erupted in pyromantic waves of flame that curled upward around him. His back faced the audience, and from nowhere, he pulled up a chair and easily swept himself into it. He sat quite casually, even retrieving from his jacket a pipe and lighting it with his finger. Puffs of smoke left his nostrils, curling toward the roof.

“Now then, good people, if I were to ask you what you expected me to do for you, what would it be?” His eyes barely lifted as he addressed the people.

Amidst several unsure voices, a man stood and said firmly, “dazzle us with death-defiance!” And at that the crowd laughed and his wife tugged him back into his seat.

“Perhaps you’ll dance on air?” came another woman’s voice, a tall mare with a reddish mane.

Lucius chortled and rose off the seat, keeping the same exact position. The crowd gasped in unison.

“But madame,” he forewarned, “I cannot dance, simply cannot, without a partner.” As he lowered himself his arms spread and he produced a violet dress of a low foreign cut. “Does this finery suit her? Let us find out.” He waved the dress in his arms, once, twice, and with a great reaction from the crowd he appeared to summon a woman into its form, a buxom white rabbit with eyes the color of shed blood. Her hand was already clasped around the dragon’s, and his tail swept and curled, seeming to lead his steps in a graceful minuet to music that an invisible violinist in the orchestra box began to play.

Satisfied with the crowd’s delighted reaction, Lucius let the rabbit drift away and disappear to the side of the stage. Next, his hands clasped, he sat back in his chair.

“Magic, my friends, my beloved audience, is a difficult science. It is equal parts creativity, ingenuity… And do you know from whence it comes? From a book? No, no. Books were written by mortals. And mortals wrote these books with the help of our glorious Queen.”

He rose again from the chair, gathering up his pipe which he had left hanging in the air before beginning his dance. Straddling the edge of the stage, his clawed toes drumming and curling at the lip of the lacquered wood.

“Dragons,” he drew out the fanciful and delightful nature of the word by rolling the “r”, “are naturally predilected toward the use and mastery of magic. Observe.”

The crowed began to erupt into cheers, gasps, and screams. From under their seats, butterflies made of light began to flutter out, enrobing briefly the occupants of each seat before rising into and disappearing into the air.

“That took a modicum of effort. Greater feats have been accomplished by dragons of old, such as the razing of cities in lieu of an army sent to quell the blasphemers. It has been said that magic could, properly utilized, replace the need for warfare entirely; and warriors with it.”

Ollamayne observed the proceedings, as rapt as the artless nobility and bourgeoisie. How, he wondered, did the dragon complete all these cantrips so effortlessly? The few times the bard had tried to perform magic he found it to be completely inscrutable. To Lucius it was easier than breathing. Every act of magic, every sorcery, delighted the crowd to greater heights until finally Lucius cast his last spell. The stage, darkened, became host to an elaborate magic circle, inside which Lucius wrote script in light in a text no one could read. From the balcony, Ollamayne could see the intricacy of the work. The end result was the complete disappearance of everything on stage – Lucius, the chair, the pipe – in a flash and a crackle, driving the audience up to their feet with applause as if rods had risen beneath them.

As the crowd roared its approval, Ollamayne performed a disappearing act all his own, whirling from his seat, down the stairs, and through the empty lobby before the crowds spilled out. He smiled his way through a guarded door down a dark hall which led backstage, where he found Lucius, stage makeup lining his eyes, fondling that white rabbit assistant.

“Master Hargrave. What a wonderful show you have provided. I am here to give you a special sort of reward.”

The rabbit tittered and Lucius arched an eyebrow. “My dear boy I am taken, at least for this evening – better luck tomorrow.”

Ollamayne fumed in silent anger and twisted his mouth into an intimation of a grin. “You misunderstand, friend: The All-Queen Aurelina demands your presence. Tonight. Now.”

Lucius, owing to his awe or his eager interest or still more southward spirits, released his assistant as one releases a hot ember from the hand.

“I thought that might get your attention, good master.”

\--

“You are Ollamayne?”

“How insightful for you to anticipate my name, is it because of my dashing features, or, can you tell I have the voice of a singer? The greatest singer in the land?”

“Yes, you’re him.”

The antelope flapped his ears and toyed with the fabric of a multicolored scarf around his neck. Lucius, patiently, walked along until they neared the palace gates. The last half hour had been a preposterous exercise in humility. Rather, Lucius didn’t have to be humble, he merely had to listen to the famous bard talk about himself the entire time. He was even treated to that most famous ballad, which he had heard people humming in the streets for years, _Queen of Sun, Moon, and Sky, and Earth._ Ollamayne had a harp tucked into his robe, and he played it ceaselessly for his co-occupant, until Lucius emerged from the carriage in front of the palace with the same desperation as a diver surfaced for air.

“Here we are.” Ollamayne’s smile was audible, and it wasn’t a smile of kindness. Lucius stood taking in the sight of the gleaming palace, illuminated in the darkness by torches and other, magical lights. “That’s right, you’ve never been here before, have you? I imagine everyone has such a reaction upon seeing the palace, but it has been so long and so frequent that I cannot remember mine.”

As Ollamayne lead the way, leaving Lucius next to a short-statured, slender guard with a fluffy, chocolate-colored tail peeking out from her plated armor.

“Don’t mind him. Mind Her.” The girl’s voice, echoing in her helmet, faded over Lucius shoulder as he pressed on toward the entrance to the palace.

“This is the grand foyer, view the statues on your left and right, gorgeous, perhaps the most gorgeous statues in the palace.” Ollamayne gestured about every room he led Lucius through, his sleeves and scarves tossing about with the enthusiasm of his endeavor. He didn’t even have to look to see where he was going, weaving through servants, guards, and courtiers stumbling about, drunk on expensive liqueur. He was at home in the palace, though his elaborately embroidered robes and sirwal set him apart from the more local nobility who occupied many official court positions.

The depths of the palace remained as bright as the entrance, but fewer servants and guards lined the halls of the innermost chambers, and when Ollamayne lead Lucius to a salon, the two were completely alone.

“Where is she?” Lucius demanded, tired of games and harboring complicated and fearful emotions the nearer he came to their apparent goal. His whiskers bounced and his ears rose when Ollamayne opened a door opposite a plush, red velvet divan.

The All-Queen entered, her movements beyond practiced grace, her eyes level, her smirk barely detectable. Lucius stared at her, his mouth moving without words. Her beauty had pierced him like a sword and it was all he could do to staunch the bleeding. She stood mere feet from him. He had never seen her so close, only on festival days or public events was he ever able to catch the most distant glimpse of her.

“You can look, you know.” Her tone indicated that he must look. His eyes fell to her cleavage, decorated by pearls and gold necklaces and jewels.

“Your Utmost.” Lucius stammered, falling prostrate if only to see her full thighs pressing together above the knee as he did so.

“Rise, Lucius. Oh, and, Ollamayne.” The antelope inclined his head with interest. “Wonderful job. Now leave.” The antelope quietly exited the salon with the intention of pouting in another room.

Lucius picked himself up and awaited further instruction. The Queen walked carefully to the divan and seated herself, then with a nod of her snout indicated that Lucius should sit next to her. He did. So near, he breathed her scent. He had known spoiled noblewomen, even overnighted with them. The degree to which those women were pampered by droves of servants was not comparable. The All-Queen’s fur, a few shades lighter than jet, had been anointed in oils and massaged for hours, if its shine and splendor was any indication. She smelled of sweet cherry blossom, dark honey and her own animal scent. Her hair was thoroughly perfumed with hibiscus and something that reminded him of whipped icing.

“You are a magician, are you not? The son of a soldier, Claudius, and an enchantress, Abigail.”

“Yes, Your Utmost. Would you like to see a spell or arcane—”

“No. You do not command such things. Your mother, a poultice-maker, a mixer of unguents and salves, was more apothecary than enchantress, she just knew how to sell her wares. Your father’s service I do not call into question. You, Lucius, you have perfected your art. It is my heartfelt pleasure to tell you that your art is not magic. But it could be.”

She appeared to breathe slower than Lucius might expect of someone, and her gaze nullified any relaxing aspects of her plump physique and beautiful face. He noticed all these eccentricities about her, each confirming that which had been inculcated into him all his life – she was the divine given form.

“I…”

“You command the stage well. Fireworks, audience plants, deceptive lighting and the use of decoys all throughout your performance. Suffice it to say, nothing like it has ever been done. In ancient times, magicians, true magicians, had much better things to do than amuse the jaded and tired upper classes.”

“True magic.” Lucius said the words and they were like sugar on his tongue. “Please,” he begged shamelessly, “you must teach me, make me your pupil, anything, I crave power, I crave the secrets of the ether. I have been a student of the culture of magic for years, for decades, and ever has its truth remained outside my reach!”

Aurelina, amused at how easily the trap was set and sprung. “Do you know why dragons are so rare, Lucius?”

Lucius made to answer but choked as a binding pressure crushed the underside of his jaw and neck. He clawed at a thick rope encircling him, choking him into silence. He felt it burn. But there was no rope. His rump left the couch upward as he was strangled, and the woman seated next to him feigned no ignorance – she simply didn’t seem to care.

“Dragons are prideful creatures. Pride and vanity are two traits I very dearly adore. But in some, their great love of self-outpaces their ability to properly please me. They forget they exist beneath me. Long ago I had a great many of your kind serving me. Their betrayal was the greatest ever since. Many of them had to be put down. You are descended from one of the few lines allowed to persist. Their distance from my capitol was enough to save their lives, and to think, you were born here…” Her eyes moved to Lucius’ neck, and as if cut by a knife the invisible rope separated and dropped him sputtering and choking onto the couch. He looked about frantically through tearing red eyes and found nothing, no one in the room other than them.

“Real magic can be subtle, invisible… or it can be more grandiose than you can imagine. I will show you more if you survive.”

Lucius needed a moment to process what was being said. He was still recovering from the strangling and reacted with further shock when a great meal began to be carted in by servants whom Aurelina had not called. At least, not audibly. The hooves of the does and ewes were completely silent. The servants, both prey themselves, had arrived with a great bounty of meat amongst the foodstuff. Lucius’ sensitive nostrils detected the garlic and onions stewing inside soups and fried with shanks of beef or breasts of goose and duck covered in fatback and cloves. He spied cloves decorating an enormous ham and could not help but slaver and lick his chops.

“Forfeit your fallacy of self; in believing you are anything other than my servant in all things.”

Butter overflowed the edges of dishes dedicated to serving it. Boar’s head, unevolved, he hoped, with a grotesque tongue was smothered in spices and salt. The sum of the feast was frightful, but mouth-watering. Lucius had expected some kind of bargain, but this was far from the first thing. A table adjacent the divan was swallowed by the array of food, and Aurelina took it upon herself to gesture to it.

“Go on, then. Finish this and arcane wisdom will be conferred upon you.”

Lucius knew better than to question her in voice, but his mind bounced and shook with the questions that bubbled up from his tar-like fear. The servants had already disappeared, and his eyes sought contact for confirmation of his doubts, but there were no eyes but hers in which to look, and he did not want to look there.

“Allow me to demonstrate a dragon’s appetite.” Lucius rumbled, attempting to work up some larger degree of hunger than he previously considered himself capable of feeling. He hadn’t eaten dinner that night; he never ate prior to a performance. Ever the showman, he decided without thought that this would be another role for him. What Aurelina knew terrified him. He could feel the weight of her eyes on him as searched for a fork. Finding none and feeling her gaze grow urgent, he sampled the first plate with his bare hands, slipping salted meat into his mouth.

Flavor was irrelevant. If it had tasted of ash, Lucius would have crammed his mouth with it all the same in the company of the All-Queen. Any awkward movement could be considered a slight, and nobles had been executed for less. He, a commoner, knew his place, and it was beneath her.

“With haste. I am immortal; you are not,” she chided merrily.

Lucius’ manners remained, picking at meats with fork and knife and maintaining some semblance of pride. For a time, he was quite excited to have it all to himself. He went through a bit of everything, then, having devoured a mouthful of ham with the All-Queen staring him down, he searched the table for something to drink. A bottle of good wine from a maker of which he had never heard served him well, but in lieu of a glass he quaffed straight from the neck, his cheeks and throat bulging with the eagerness of his imbibement. He wanted to be drunk for this, swimming in feelings that it may be his last meal.

As he began to slurp from a bowl of creamed soup his eyes drifted over to the All-Queen who, to her credit, had ceased to stare at him. She was in fact drinking something bubbly from a glass. Lucius had no idea from whence it came but was somewhat relieved by its presence. Perhaps this divinity wasn’t all executions and tests, but perhaps he nonetheless should lick the bowl to avoid condemnation. Already his stomach had grown tight, as the meal was far more than one person, even a dragon, could easily consume. Though he towered twelve inches over the All-Queen, her mere presence kept his heart racing despite any attempts at outward calm. That lack of calm translated to a desperation to please.

Lucius groaned, leaning back into the warm embrace of the divan. His digestion occupied his entire mind owing to his drunkenness. The food soaked up as much of the wine as it could, but he had drunk past his limit and there was still another bottle resting on the table amidst a thrashed mess of scattered plates.

“There remains but one bottle of port between you and arcane ascension.”

His eyes popped open to see her looking expectantly in his direction.

“I… cannot. I am at my limit, forgive me.”

The Queen shrugged. “You did not die, that is a start. Loyalty is difficult to obtain. Last week I had a visiting noble come and shoot targets for me. Before that I had someone wash every floor in the palace. When mortals put their all into such tasks and offer not a single word of anger or defiance… that is when I know I can have them near to me.”

\--

_Three years later._

“Do keep your eyes on the ball.” Lucius insisted, curling his claws around the glowing orange sphere he had conjured from nothing. “Beauty, as that of our Queen, sprang from nothing…” The obese dragon swirled his sagging arm, hidden by the wide sleeves of his patterned palatinate purple robe “But any scholar worth his salt knows the opposite is true. Nothing: it sprang from her grandeur. Creation is hers.” And from the sphere, all fire and heat, burst a hundred butterflies of colors reflecting every color the crowd of courtiers could perceive. Servants paused in their endless work for a glance at the display, which brought the expected noises of appreciation and light applause. “Real magic,” the dragon continued, “is hers alone to command. I am but an imitator, a humble imitator of a rare-practiced art…”

Aurelina was present, occupying her throne of rosewood and gold, seated amongst dark red cushions. Her thighs were lost amidst the piles of overstuffed pillows in that they resembled them perfectly. It was before her throne that Lucius performed his acts of magic, those which she had taught him over several years of study bookended and at times supported by snacking. Lucius had acquired a taste for the cooking of the palace, which far outdid even the finest capitol establishments mere miles from the palace walls.

Near enough to be annoyed by the display, Ollamayne played one of his instruments and hummed. Ladies and fine gentleman were gathered around him, as many as were gathered around Lucius.

 “But you are not a servant of the court, are you, Master? Tell us of your travels!” An ebullient vixen with a full bodice inquired as such while she waited for the crowds the men to dissipate or for the All-Queen to tire of the proceedings.

“Dear Contessa DuParlesse, the notes beg not be disturbed. Are we not all servants of Her Utmost?”

She protested still, “but you are the Worldwide Bard! To write so many ballads, so many pages of prose, you have walked around the world!”

Ollamayne stopped playing and grinned unscrupulously. “Much of it I rode in carriages, for the earth feels as gravid with meaning below wheels and pillows as it does beneath hooves. Indeed, consider the rumble of a traveling carriage, moving through that which our ruler has bestowed us? My pen flies when my feet rest. Speaking of which, when can you say, definitively, was the last time you raised your feet? Or spread them? I should like to be there for either.” His move to lean in closer and sniff at her uncovered neck drew to an abrupt end when Lucius trundled over, huffing from the exertion of spellcasting.

“Now then, how’s that for a show? Worth a song and a half, I hope?”

The vixen gave her hand to Lucius to kiss.

“Fondness moves me to speechless inaction,” Ollamayne grumbled through gritted teeth. He turned and knelt before the All-Queen, who relieved him with the most perfunctory of nods. Proving to those gathered he was not her servant, he left the palace with his cittern slung over his shoulder and a whistled tune between his lips that stank of adventure and wanderlust.

“If you will excuse me, Your Excellency, I have an engagement with Her Utmost related to my further education.”

The woman caught a styled curl of her blonde hair around a finger and turned away with a broad smile and an imperceptible blush.

Aurelina arose from her throne suddenly and lifted her hand with a gesture to freeze her guards in place. Not with magic, which she did not need, but with will. Lucius followed after her, panting and sweating as her brisk steps betrayed the supple subtleties of her backside. Lucius looked lustfully on and anticipated a light reprimand from her later. It was worth it. He doubted he was going to lose his place as palace performer.

He no longer had to pay for anything, though he received a pension for his feats of magical prowess and service to the crown. He swam in frocks and pantaloons of lavish fabrics and materials. His white lace jabot was ever present. The matching cuffs directed the eye to watch his hand motions as he weaved spells in the air. Though popular with the ladies-in-waiting, he found himself fondly attached to his teacher. Hacking insight into her motivations lent further to this feeling.

Lucius was not, as was usually the case, led to Aurelina’s chambers. Instead he was lead to his own, which he worried would be found unpleasantly cluttered. To his surprise, Aurelina made herself at home, sinking into a chaise.

“The time has come for an excursion into realms that you, perhaps, suspect exist. Lucius, in my instruction, I have expounded as to the transitory nature of reality. Yet, lacking eyes beyond your own, you fail to understand fully that which I describe to you. Consider the cake, possessing layers. But these layers are just one dimension of understanding.”

Lucius’s chambers were comprised of a living area with couches and a bed, attached to which were an alchemical and thaumaturgical laboratory, and a small library with texts selected for their usefulness to his course of study. The texts Aurelina had given him hadn’t been read in centuries and were written by names he did not recognize even in the reference section of modern tomes. Old magic had a way of demanding a great deal of its user. Many of the old masters had simply killed themselves in accidents brought on by wielding too much power.

“Is this what you truly desire? Power? To understand the cosmos? To drown in the revelation that the world is governed by forces that would rip you apart in a moment?

Lucius did not need to think or consider or judge. The scales of balance in his head had toppled in her direction and sat rusting.

“Yes,” he whined at her, pawing at his clothes, gritting his teeth and curling his toes, “it is a great need, long have I harbored it. Under the tutelage of my mentors, my parents, I craved to know you. The essence of our ruler, she to whom we beg and bow, in whose name nations rise and are put down.

“Petulance suits you, Lucius. You wear elegance like a crustacean wears a shell. You are a monster and a menagerie would pay top dollar for you. Dragons, the nobles whisper, aren’t they a myth? Serve me well, Lucius, _survive this_ , Lucius, and you will one day be the subject of myths, mark my words. You may well be like the dragons of old. But if you betray me…”

“I shall not, my Queen.”

“I have shown great kindness to you. I made you as you are so as to dull your blade, so to speak." As she spoke she looked about the room, at the sigils drawn on vellum, the vials and flasks full of smoke and liquid. Not a single thing surprised, impressed, or interested her.

"My... Blade?"

"Happy mortals do not rebel... Or so I continue to hope. Earthly pleasures, goals achieved, dreams granted, I do these things for you, not to you."

"Yes, my Queen," Lucius stammered, still standing until told otherwise.

A long moment passed between them, and the Queen sighed. Her eyes were cast down at the floor. Lucius could not say a word, but a strange feeling came over him seeing her in such a state. It was only another moment before she composed herself, putting her arms up on the back of the chaise and nodding to the dragon.

"Let us begin your lesson."


	9. Blind Devotion

Breyolt awoke to the clouds in his mind parting slowly. His hangover had not dissipated, and his throat was parched. He was chained with his wrists tied and affixed to the walls a meter opposite him on either side. Naked, his knees ground into the rough stone beneath them. His jaw ached from straining against a cage around it. So hampered, he had naught to do but replay the events of the last few hours. At the very least, the complete darkness made it much easier to remember.

He slipped into his thoughts, piecing together the day while his sweat dripped onto the floor and every muscle from his waist up begged an opportunity to rest.

After the altercation in his apartments he had been led somewhere deep below the earth, down a stairwell, bound at his wrists and with a humiliating muzzle strapped over his snout. It could not keep him from snarling or baring his teeth, but his speech was severely impaired, such that his earnest desire to treat the guards and Carmot to a bit of haranguing had to be suppressed at the time. The stairs seemed to go on for an hour, circling a hole that went to depths Breyolt could not measure. A polished banister and carpeted stairs transformed into a cold stone tomb as he descended. Torchlight flickered ever more faintly as the darkness of the underground thickened like porridge.

Not a word passed between Breyolt and Carmot, who lead him by a leash. The collar that had been placed around his neck was tied into a knot which would constrict with any amount of pulling. The steel spines ringing the inner circumference like teeth pricked Breyolt if he lagged behind even slightly and were certain to kill him if any sudden movements were made. His hands, bound behind him, wrung themselves, clenching and unclenching fitfully. The lengths of chain were heavy and not a bit like the chains one saw in common use around the kingdom. Their links, thick as his fingers, were made for this purpose alone.

Carmot stopped so suddenly that Breyolt bumped into her. She turned around to see him grinning inside the metal cage covering his snout. Behind them the two guards stopped in unison and entirely blocked the stairs in a formation that also interlocked their halberds. Breyolt turned his head and counted two more behind them. Returning his inappropriate smile, the marten retrieved a black fabric from her satchel. This she wrapped around Breyolt’s eyes and forehead. Upon continuing their descent, Breyolt found some difficulty managing the stairs without his eyesight. He stumbled foolishly and twisted his knee as the last step gave way to a floor. The sounds that welcomed Breyolt to even ground were unspeakable, but Breyolt had heard them all before on the battlefield. He had heard them in the dungeons in Linalita. This time he expected to be making something like them.

The escort led Breyolt deep through halls and doors made of old, bloody iron. He committed each turn to memory and listened with care. Not a single voice, screaming, was recognizable. If other dissidents were held here, they were not any that Breyolt knew. If the justice meted out below the palace was similar to the secret prisons in Linalita, he would never see the sun again, but he would live a long, miserable life, spilling his blood extremely regularly. It was practice in Linalita to continue torture long after information or confessions were given and usefulness was outlived in order to completely destroy the mind that had dared concoct a scheme against the ducal throne, or in lack of faithfulness to Her Utmost. The music of keys dancing on a ring indicated to Breyolt that he was being placed in a cell. They left the black cloth on his eyes after chaining him to the wall. He had been left kneeling there ever since. He had no idea how long it had been. His throbbing head seemed like the ticking of a clock.

It could have been hours, or days since he was placed in the cell. Present once again in the moment, Breyolt thought he felt the air move. Carmot’s voice felt like cold water on his neck in the complete darkness.

“You’re awake. Oh, pull all you like; these dungeons aren’t ramshackle. This is the richest city in the world. We can afford new fittings when they rust over from the bloodbaths.”

Breyolt did not stop pulling, flexing his arms to bring his hands together. He could not move them beyond a few scant inches.

“You… Carmot…” His voice cracked and strained and his neck constricted. Licking his lips for some tiny bit of moisture, he could only mutter a second, “you…”

He lowered his head and felt a sharp, two-pronged jab in his throat. He jerked his chin back up, and only then felt the ring of metal around his neck affixing the fork in place.

“Your Grace – no, Breyolt – if I was a better person, I would not take pleasure in this. But I do. I am Her Utmost’s lead torturer. As in any vocation, the key to thriving is enjoyment. You see there are things no one should be shown. There are notes no one should hit. It is my job to push men and women past their limits, so that their last words are strained praises to the woman above us. For years, I’ve taken to this task with pride, and I have never once seen anyone above a count. To have you with us here is a rare treat. Spilling some fat merchant’s organs into the floor drains isn’t as engaging as spending the evenings with a man of your station accused of your acts. You’ve really done it now, haven’t you, Breyolt?”

Though he couldn’t see, Breyolt felt the smile on her face as she spoke. He grumbled in silence beneath the cage around his snout. Carmot stood over him. She stared at him for a while before loosening the clasp on the underside of the muzzle.

“This isn’t as fun if you can’t cry out for mercy.”

Breyolt took his chance and sneered. “I thought you missed me. I thought you cared for me. You tell me you hate her and yet here you are carrying out her orders as if you were her right hand. Have you forgotten who bought your life? Is your loyalty so easily compromised?”

She pulled off her glove and reached down to take his velvety ear in her hand. “Breyolt, I know it’s hard to believe, but other people are like you, too. They’re conniving, they’re bold and careless of the needs of others. They use people like tools to get what they want, and they kill as they are needed to kill. Her Utmost very much appreciates the work I do here,” releasing his ear she began to pace around him, “and I have grown to like it. In a way it is just like fighting in the coliseum. But, here, I always have the upper hand.”

“The line between good and evil thins and thins,” Breyolt snapped hoarsely.

“There is no such line. To harm is to do good if it is in her name. And, Breyolt, have you forgotten the ambitions of the court? We aspire to please our Queen, and we don’t care who we step on to do it. I’d slit every throat that fancies itself close to her, that purports to best speak her praises, if it would bring me an inch closer. Her approval is a drug. We’re all indecent hedonists here, every one of us. I suppose I’ve had more trysts than you, but, then the female is rarely celebrated for her conquests as is the male, now is she?”

“My great aunt was acclaimed as quite the conqueror of fortified towers both erected and—”

“Shut up!” Carmot snapped. After a moment she forced chuckled under her breath and jostled the chain between Breyolt’s left hand and the wall. “I’m to torture you until I hear otherwise. Only the Queen can save you, and given what you’ve been saying about her—the awful things I’m certain you’ve been thinking…”

By now Breyolt could feel her presence in the room, and it was easy to detect through the rustling of her clothes or the change in air current where she was standing. That knowledge, however, would be of more use were his restraints somewhat less restraining. In the middle of his gut he felt the urge to vomit as his hangover threaded through him. He was exhausted and thirsty, and cursed his luck. But he was also proud of Carmot. Proud of how ruthless she was now that she had revealed herself to him.

Carmot’s boots crunched on something. She mused aloud, “a torturer’s work is comprised of innumerable decisions, none of which are easy. Am I to use a thumbscrew, or choke pear? Hack off your arm? You can pray to the Queen that she will deign to put you back together. And then, should I create new scars, or open up the old? You are covered in old scars. As you flex and strain they throb and beg for me to split them back open.”

“You’re doing this alone?” Breyolt sought what strength he had left, but it was impudence and anger that fortified him for the conversation ahead.

“Yes.”

“When I tortured the conspirators against my father, I did it for a reason. To avenge him. You’re an orphan. No one in this world cares about you more than I do. You have no one to avenge. Or is this really just duty?”

The sentence had barely found the air before Carmot punched the side of Breyolt’s head, knocking him for a loop. His body swayed but he kept his head up. The tines of the fork pricked his chest and throat warningly. The marten hissed and backed away from him, or so he guessed. He only had four senses to depend on.

“You have such privileges, Your Grace,” she spat the honorific, “you know what it’s like to have a home and a family. I don’t even know where I was born. While you prattle on about vengeance and honor, remember that I was raised in a pit by warriors and you were raised in a genteel castle with silk padding your arse.”

Breyolt half-grinned, half-winced. “You should visit Linalita someday. You’ll see the truth. We have the most bloodthirsty winters in all the settled world. We birth warriors and supply them to the Queendom. Do you know what it’s like in Cvaravald Keep? How many young soldiers die in the first week as they fight without sleep and subsist on bones and scraps? I’m not impressed with your grueling upbringing. I have as many scars from my youth as I do from my adulthood. What’s more, you’re hasty as a gust of wind. All push and no direction. In Linalita the hasty are extinct. And if that was your best punch, well, I don’t even think I’m going to bruise.”

Carmot cursed and moved to Breyolt’s right. She spent a moment doing something, and then Breyolt felt a sharp strike just under his ribs. The wind left him and he gasped, discomfited as he could not open his mouth very far at all. He felt his jaw stretch painfully against the steel muzzle, the bands cutting into his chin. In having lurched over, the fork cut at his chest, tearing open a wound beneath the fur.

“You’re not even doing this for the Queen,” Breyolt coughed, “this is all for yourself. How self-centered. What will she think?”

“I don’t mind being a pawn.”

“You’re taking pawn to the other end of the board. Fancy being Queen, Carmot? Fancy sacrilege and treason?”

Silence answered him. The wolf smiled beneath the cage.

Carmot grabbed the fork under his chin and wrestled it aside. She tightened the strap on Breyolt’s muzzle, eliciting a deep growl from him, and returned the fork to its place under his chin. Then she removed his blinder and his eyes adjusted to the hazy light. She was standing in front of him, dressed in a pair of tight breeches, fine boots, and a boyish calfskin jacket over a simple shirt. She was just putting her glove back on, staring a hole through him. When she rubbed the inside of her left elbow, her eyes drifted down to the floor. Her breaths came quietly. It seemed as if she had to work herself back up to speak to him again.

“I take it back,” she snarled, shaking, “You’re so much easier to stand when you’re gagged. Yesterday I was so happy to see you, I thought, ‘the bastard’s back, let’s see if I can’t leash him this time,’ but the things you said were unforgivable to a true servant of the Queen.” As she spoke, the marten walked around the cell. It was large enough for several people, but the space was being used to bind Breyolt’s arms to the wall. “I remember you were a selfless lover, Breyolt. I appreciated that. But the way you left filled me with the desire to torture you even then. How did it work? Did you go from my bed to Princess Orlei’s in the same night? Or did you have the decency to spend a day flirting with her first? Are you going to do the same thing with the Queen? She’ll snap you in half, Breyolt. She’ll eat your innards and hang you next to a tapestry depicting your idiotic aspirations and stunning downfall.”

‘She hasn’t done it yet, and I’m told she can read minds,’ Breyolt thought glibly. With the muzzle on, all he could do was growl.

“Come off it you smug bastard. Hold still,” Carmot instructed as she knelt next to him. Her smell commanded his nose to attention. That sweet sweaty aroma fresh from a session training the guards stood out like a rare flower against the blood and the pitch from the torches. Breyolt glimpsed a silver key slip from her sleeve into her hand. The other held a knife with a slender blade. As she made to unlock the cuff around his right arm, she lifted the knife and examined it in the light. Once satisfied, she placed it in Breyolt’s hand and, guiding him, used it to slice open the long scar trailing over the bottom most rib on his right side. His muffled, angered screaming came through gritted teeth and echoed off the cold stone surrounding them.

“Good, wonderful screams, Breyolt. If you ever escaped, everyone who sees you will know how severe this torment was,” Carmot lilted before she punched him across the mouth again, a right hook following clean through the arc. “Down here you’ll miss everything. The simple pleasure of a carriage ride. Eyeing Llerandie in the gardens. Following her just to watch her rump bounce.” Carefully, Carmot unlocked the cuff around his other arm. He fell on his side immediately despite his freedom, every muscle in his chest and shoulders aching. Carmot sliced his left arm open with the tip of the blade while he lay there grunting.

The duke fought every urge to attack. Delirious, he struggled to make sense of Carmot’s actions, and realized she was freeing him. He struggled to his feet, smelling the scent of his own blood as it ran down his arms and waist. The marten was opening the door to the cell. When she spoke to him, she kept her back turned. She wouldn’t look at him.

“It is time to take my lunch. I’m thinking of an ample serving of wine, to celebrate your imminent death, which you earned. Goodbye, Breyolt. Don’t ever misplace your trust again. You stupid blunderbuss. Damn you!”

Carmot departed, leaving the door to the cell wide open.

Breyolt groaned, then made attempts to control his breathing. She hadn’t taken his muzzle off, purely out of spite he imagined. He was dehydrated, strained, hung over, and now he was bleeding. Quite the parting gift. The old scar on his chest, ripped open again, stung with the reminder of when he first received it. The other cut bled profusely, and he did his best to spit blood from the cuts in his mouth so elegantly delivered by Carmot’s blows to his face. Summoning his remaining energy, he rose to his feet and hobbled, half-bent, to the door of the cell. Only the moans of those begging to be spared reached his ears. He could see no glints of armor in the distant lights of torches. Glad he had the presence of mind to remember the directions Carmot had taken him, he began to move toward a corridor tinged with the acrid stench of burning flesh.

The smoke that Breyolt ducked under came not from the tortures, but from the glowing iron tools used to burn brands into the flesh of unadulants. Bleeding wounds were cauterized to extend the time the torture subject survived. He was familiar with the methods, but a furtive glance through a set of bars embedded into the wall revealed a fat bull in a leather apron cooking someone’s limb while they watched. Breyolt grimaced and turned a corner into another unguarded hallway. Again and again each turn he made lead to an unguarded corridor of the dungeon, such that in their emptiness they began to blend together. He left blood smeared on the corners of the walls he hugged for support. The weight had left his head and he swam for the stairs in the blurry light before him. He hadn’t climbed the first step when he doubled over, coughed on his bile, and vomited amply. Constrained by the muzzle he wore, the stuff oozed unpleasantly around his teeth, then poured onto the stairs beneath him.

Blurred vision and stinging pain nearly kept him at the base of the spiraling staircase, ascending to the only place worse than the palace’s underbelly. At least the knives here were out where you could see them, instead of tucked into plates of food. The wolf longed to sprawl out on the cold stone, to give up. He tottered up a few steps, then collapsed. He stared upward and the stairs disappeared into a grey spiral. The soft call of a voice reached him, but he didn’t have the strength to prick his ears. It faded and he blamed his woozy imagination. Then a sharp blow struck the crown of his head.

“Your Grace.” A pause. “For all your bloviating I expected you to at least make it up the stairs. Come on, you lingering malaise.”

Ollamayne’s smooth voice made any insult sound like a sonnet. As soon as Breyolt realized it was him, he snapped a collar around his neck, then with deft hooves, tied a bag over his head.

“Don’t make a sound. Don’t walk oddly, don’t gesture, and don’t even get half an erection. Blast it all, is that it? That? You’ve bedded every woman in the Queen’s inner circle with that? I don’t know what I was worried about.”

Breyolt decided he liked this side of Ollamayne, even if it was hauling him up the staircase at a pace that would exacerbate his pain and weakness.

The next few minutes were a sightless blur. The walked for eternity up the stairs. Ollamayne occasionally yanked a leash to lift Breyolt back up from his knees. The spiral downward, which seemed eons ago, now seemed like eternal drudgery in reverse. Breyolt gasped and panted. Ollamayne didn’t seem to care much for the labor either and clucked his tongue at regular intervals even after the bare stone became lushly carpeted wood flooring.

“I really should lose some weight, but you see, our queen floods the realm so with rich delicacies… Cakes that are like spongy clouds… And their whipped silver linings… If you knew how many stanzas I’ve composed about these damn pastries you’d understand.”

Breyolt groaned impatiently in his confines.

“Well fie on you. You’d better get used to me.”

Ollamayne tugged the leash. A moment later, fresh air rushed pass them with the opening of a door and soon the low din of the palace became audible. Breyolt heard all manner of footsteps around him, hushed whispers, and soon, laughter.

A female voice greeted them, “why, Isaac! Taking a slave for yourself? And here I had bet you didn’t like men that way.”

“My good lady, for menial labor, a woman would not do. I would oft not be able to keep myself from bothering her as she performed her tasks. As such, a man is ideal for back-breaking and provides no distraction from my dedication to the arts.”

Laughter rang out in response, but Breyolt never had a moment to stop as his captor, or owner, pulled him along.

“Take a glimpse of those awful scars about that slave. What a horrid criminal he must have been,” some observer said, their whisper tickling the duke’s ears.

“Certainly a waste if he’s not going to bed. Ah, well.”

Breyolt gritted his teeth and walked on, his thoughts singing that he at least had a sack over his head. A few moments later he felt a hoof on his chest and Ollamayne’s voice struck up again.

“Has the carriage arrived? Oh, good. The services of the royal palace are never a disappointment. Ah. Is that Dorhyt I see?”

Breyolt heard the familiar huffing and puffing of that broad jackal. Then his voice.

“Good to see you, Isaac. Out for a stroll? Walking the slave, as it were?”

“Business, actually. A lady friend of mine needs her gardens tended to, repairs about the grounds, pruning, that sort of thing. With the place in disrepair, there will doubtless be some other menial tasks for him. I intend to make his labor extremely hard—oh shit. I’m not bedding him, understand.”

Baron Rostoff chortled so loudly that he didn’t hear Breyolt scoff under the hood, “that business is none of mine, of course, good bard! Even so, this one looks as sinewy as a young buck with aught to prove. If he gives you the slip, just you tell me. Command of the capitol guard gives me the breadth to apprehend such villains, and no one knows this city better than I.”

“I shall remember this, as the sun remembers to shine. Good day, my lord.”

Then the canvas that made up the entirety of Breyolt’s vision brightened significantly and he surmised that he was outside and that it was daytime. The cool air was a panacea and he supposed he could kill Ollamayne by supper and finish off the good parts, then have a bottle of wine and escape the capitol by midnight. The idea had him salivating, as it had been a day without food and the thought of the smirking, fast-talking bard’s blood cascading over his lips and teeth was better than any poetry.

Outside, Breyolt felt every texture beneath his pads but could make no estimations as to the direction. The walk was long and silent, until Breyolt detected two familiar scents. The first, that of unevolved horses, and the second, that of Llerandie.

“My lady, your radiance—”

“Get in the damn carriage.”

Ollamayne helped Breyolt up the steps and when they were seated the carriage began to rumble in movement. The light through the canvas darkened again. A second later, someone ripped the bag from Breyolt’s head. The collar remained.

Before him Breyolt took in the sight of the thick curtains, drawn closed behind the glass. An oil lamp mounted to the roof lit the interior, and in its opulence looked like a miniature chandelier. Llerandie filled out a dress with a broad pannier that brushed against Breyolt and Ollamayne’s knees, and she fanned herself fitfully as she stared between the two of them. Her delicate beauty had matured and added lines and her eyes were cold, not how they had been in her youth.

“We’re leaving the capitol.” She finally said. It appeared to be delivered difficultly and each word mulled over. “Queen save us, Breyolt, you look even better now, than… I think it will take some time to get you a proper pair of clothes, yes, some time indeed.”

Ollamayne had begun to tune his cittern and idly continued doing it for as long as he could until Llerandie raised a hoof to stop him. In the slits of brown on her face, like elaborate makeup, the springbok appeared almost as beautiful as the queen herself.

“I’m bleeding all over your fine carriage. Are you going to tell me why I’m here instead of being pricked in a dungeon?” Breyolt demanded.

Ollamayne mumbled, “she’ll prick you if you aren’t careful, I wager.”

The Viscountess Antilopine scowled. “Enough. We are departing for the south. Had I any option in the matter, you would have spent another week in manacles. But, the plan needed to proceed. I will tell you what I know, if you promise not to scoff.”

“Why, Llera, were I to scoff, I would miss the opportunity to tell you a plan requiring me demands I eventually be told, regardless of any scoffing I may do.”

The carriage struck a particularly large bump in the road, perhaps an obstacle, as Llerandie gave Breyolt her most scornful glare.

“Many years have passed since we were lovers. I have hardened my heart in that time, and now your sneering and flirting appears as the behavior of my children. Do children rule in Linalita, or are their men capable of higher thought?”

Breyolt looked sidelong at Ollamayne while the bard peeked out the curtain at the streets and storefronts of the capitol.

“Proceed, my lady,” the chagrined wolf muttered.

Llerandie nodded, bunching her jowls, and stroked the fine silks that covered her stomach. She gathered her thoughts for several moments before continuing.

“Though we must first be well away from the capitol before I divulge everything, there is some I can now describe: your services, both your personal services and those of Linalita, are highly valued by all in the Queendom. There are those parties who have need of them. Once we reach our destination, I will introduce you to my daughters and my husband, who assist me in what we endeavor to accomplish. This is not elective.”

Breyolt cocked his head. “You expect me, with such scant information, to devote myself? To swear fealty to one whose nobility pales to mine, to one who could barely fit out the carriage door in that dress much less give chase were I to abscond? And at what point am I allowed to laugh at this jester’s ruse?”

The springbok sighed and set her eyes upon Breyolt. “I needn’t say this, but you seem to act as if some cloud has obscured your vision. First, I can see your cock; you’re naked and disarmed as a cub, and your role as Duke of Linalita can be nullified in an instant, passed off to some far-removed cousin, if it hasn’t already been. Furthermore, you seem oblivious to your status as a wanted personage. A few more hours and the Queen will doubtless issue a proclamation of summary judgment, demanding you be slaughtered on sight rather than entertaining the privilege of any sort of high justice.”

“And her lead torturer will unlock my chains again?”

“There won’t be any chains. I would expect Her Utmost to offer a title upon receipt of your head. She might even bestow peerage upon a commoner. She has made anathemas of men and women for lesser crimes than sedition. The Aurelia City Guard Corps is not allied with the same people who extricated you from that abbatoir. Do not expect Dorhyt or his patrols to stay their swords. For that reason, we are traveling far from the capitol.”

Breyolt listened, but each word only stoked the fires of his outrage. “For the statement of simple facts and my desire for her the Queen seeks to make a lost calf of me? To throw me to her murderers, of whom I am chief? Bring me to Dorhyt. Even naked I’ll spill his organs in a duel.”

Ollamayne pressed, “and then you’ll make quick work of every last guard in the city? Of every noble who bends their neck to the Queen’s will?”

“Linalitians die in battle, not on their stomachs crawling to their supposed salvation while hawks and vultures hover above them in fine carriages and silks,” and Breyolt looked between the two as if expecting to see feathers about them.

“You’ve not your sword or your pistol. A single bolt from a crossbow is enough to kill you.”

“They’ve never managed to before.”

“The Aurelia Guard Corps have better aim than some shiftless foreign nationals,” Llerandie responded calmly.

“Have I not become like them, that my praises to the Queen do not strain my voice? That my knees are not sufficiently dusted with the earth upon which she walks? I already roiled with one rebellion and you want me to join another?”

“You kill more of them than anyone else. And now you pity them? Count yourself among them?”

“Pride and spoils are rewards for a job I particularly like. I like killing. To do so on the side of the law is an irrelevant but convenient reason to commit murder. Blame my ancestors and their packs,” he sneered now, looking at the two of them and their hooves, “for instilling within me such a passion for combat. I refuse to blindly worship her when she has demonstrated nothing of her omnipotence in as long as anyone can remember.”

“I trust,” Llerandie said the words with a smile, “you have spoken to everyone?”


	10. All Id and Ego

Hour after blind hour passed and Breyolt became quite used to the darkness. Conversation dropped off; even Ollamayne saw fit to shut his mouth for the first time Breyolt could remember. Breyolt, irritated at having both his sight and the truth of his rescue obfuscated, searched for things to say, but such a powerful silence had crept up between the three carriage mates that he struggled to break it. It was quite boring. All he could do was groan in annoyance, or ask for wine.

“A slave drinking wine? But that would break the illusion,” Llerandie replied succinctly.

“Fuck your illusion,” spat Breyolt, having found his opportunity to be indignant.

Ollamayne interrupted with a start, “It’s called ‘The Gilded Lily,’” he said, moving aside the thick velvet curtains over the window, “a poor attempt at poetic metaphors if I am to be asked.”

“What is? Have we reached a destination? My idea of a Gilded Lily is something entirely different, typically nestled between two thighs, ever in need of pollenating.”

“Give us but one moment of silence as we disembark,” and here Ollamayne tugged on Breyolt’s chain goadingly.

The two figures, one elaborately clothed bongo and one naked wolf, alighted from the carriage, leaving Llerandie with assurances that she would be assisted down and out. Breyolt, in owing to the cloth sack over his head, could make out neither the time of day nor any detail of his surroundings beyond sound and smell. Increasingly he felt as if he would explode from frustration, but then, he doubted he would get far with unbridled and unarmed anger.

Ollamayne entered the inn and stood in the grand room for a moment with his charge in tow. Breyolt sniffed about, detecting the standard smell of wine and sybaritic animals. One element, the scent of blade oil, excited his senses. His nose tingled and, in his memory, he compared the scent to a catalogue of buried olfactory profiles. It did not match any oil with which he was familiar. This fact elated him, for he was particularly pissed off, and would be happy to enter some sort of brawl or a sortie with a strange and stolen sword. As if reading his thoughts, Ollamayne fiercely pulled his leash and the collar choked him painfully. Still in the role of a slave, he could do naught.

“My good man, do elect to prepare two of your finest rooms. I and my traveling companion have but one slave between us, so two is all that is necessary.”

Whoever was the proprietor responded in an understanding and obsequious tone, “this slave is meant for the bedroom, then? Shall I not clear space in the stable or the kitchen floor?”

Breyolt seethed silently as Ollamayne’s seemed to take on an air of gloating malice through his voice alone.

“Oh, yes,” Ollamayne replied, “he makes his use in bed and nowhere else. A fine specimen, is he not?”

“Speaking candidly sir, he is a bit cut-up. Interesting work you must put him to. My only desire is that the other guests are not disturbed.”

“Stamp not a single hoof, my friend, expect the utmost consideration for your other guests, a rowdy lot themselves though they seem.”

Breyolt swiveled his ears beneath the bag for some further hints of his company, but achieved nothing. Around him particular conversations were droplets in a lake of discussion that could not be separated. He could despite difficulties hear more rustic accents than he was accustomed to, and worked to place them on the globe if only as a panacea for his implacable anger. By his estimate they had traveled for at least six hours. The sun, last seen during a brief conversation with Llerandie and Ollamayne, indicated they were traveling south. By that information alone he supposed the crowd could be sailors – or shipowners, given the luxury of his surroundings that he could sense even while quite blinded – from the city of Lural.

 “’Oy, if it isn’t the Queen’s own bard! Ollamayne, how were you able to escape the palace?” rang a jovial voice above the percussion of hoofsteps. Breyolt noticed the sound of shifting metal clothing, chain or scalemail.

“Inspiration lives throughout the Queendom, and, just between you and me, the entertainment offered our Queen is unparalleled, and I am but a facet of it. The world needs my music, so I am here.”

“Then drop that concubine’s chain and rattle off a tune for us! Wine and fried bread fill the stomach, but only music fills the soul!”

Ollamayne did not drop the chain, but replied liltingly, “one hand can play the flute, and more.”

The bongo dragged Breyolt in some direction (he could no longer tell) and stopped abruptly. The sounds of discussion faded on queue for one of the world’s most famous balladeers.

“Present company includes some of the finest attired sellswords I have ever laid eyes upon. And shipowners! Aren’t you a bit far from your docks? Tired of the wine tasting of salt?”

Generous laughter. Breyolt urged his bile to remain sunk. He did not feel the chain slack as some strumming began. It was a simple tune, but the bongo’s voice hovered over it like an halo of light.

_“In the light of Her_

_We serve ever weary_

_The hardships brought_

_The wars as teary_

_But if you have_

_A drink in hand_

_And know her beauty_

_Subsumes the land_

_You’ll need no lovers_

_Just set your mind_

_Under her covers_

_On her behind.”_

Joyful applause and laughter rose up as the listeners anticipated the bawdy ending of the bard’s well-known piece.

“All kindnesses returned to you!” Ollamayne proclaimed, tugging Breyolt’s leash toward the stairs. “I must retire, and rest, for the road breaks even a lyre’s back!” Here the bongo assisted Breyolt in climbing the stairs, which Breyolt’s feet fumblingly felt.

“You know,” Breyolt began under his breath, attempting to disguise his voice from the room, “that one is actually quite good.”

“I’ve written more songs about her attributes than times you’ve jerked off to them.”

“That is untrue, but advise me when you’ve calculated a sum.”

On the landing they reached a plush carpet guided them to the rooms, one of which lay at the end of a long hallway. Ollamayne opened the door with the click of a key and led Breyolt inside, where he removed the bag over his head and unhooked the leash from around his neck.

“Thank fuck, if I had to wear those things any longer…”

Breyolt shook his head and raised his hands to smooth his fur and ears. He licked at the corners of his mouth, which had grown dry. In doing so his teeth bared themselves at Ollamayne, sending a message that lived below words, deep below in the underbrush of ancient evolutionary history. The wolf collapsed on a bed. One bed. He noted this fact and once again bared his teeth at Ollamayne, but this time in a much more direct fashion.

“One sodding bed?” he snarled. “If you think for one second we’ll—just because I’m—” falling over his words, he looked around the room for an alternative.

“This is the most private room, and where we are to continue our discussing tonight. We will have time to rest, of course, but the Viscountess will join us ere that opportunity.”

“There’s little I can articulate that you haven’t gotten from me already. In fact, your methods, which once amused me, have now grown tiresome, and I am beginning to think I would rather have died alone on my knees than lived in your company. For a day you’ve starved me of food and water, you’ve folded your arms smugly and avoided explanations that could have placated or even galvanized me into your service. Instead your callous circumventing has only served to nurture my indignation. That is your failing, not mine. You can write a song about how stupid you and your associates were for attempting to recruit me by force and opportunity and thereby cutting off your tails to spite your asses.”

“A fine diatribe, Your Grace, and delivered with passion. Unfortunately, my hooves are tied. This journey and its eventual destination must be completed and reached. Pity you though I may, wish for your freedom though I might, I serve and serve only. If you want to spit in someone’s face, spit in that of your Viscountess. I am but a bard.”

“Who are we meeting? Or am I to believe you are a conspiracy of two?”

“No one you know. A compatriot. A decorated man like you, quite like you, more like you than you will like. I can already predict the poetry of your tête-à-tête.”

“I have no equals. If he is a peer then he shall have to prove it. Possibly by upending your little conspiracy like I have a mind to.”

“We are not a conspiracy, we are a reckoning.”

“A reckoning!” Breyolt guffawed, “adjudicated upon whom? Me? Or Aurelina, the Queen of All? She’ll swirl your organs into fairy floss before you can set up a single guillotine.”

“Your disloyalty is more garish and flagrant than that medal she gave you. What was it that happened to make you so flippant? Disregarding centuries of cultural mores; what you’re doing is as good as suicide.”

Breyolt strode toward the bed and sat upon the plush quilted duvet with his naked rear. “I tell you, if she is to be seen as a deity, as you lot so eagerly call her, as society has been built to know, then your private disobedience is a death sentence as well. I don’t bloody care. This conversation reeks of inquiry. You’ll have to make up my reasons for keeping my snout up in one of your ballads.” He ground his rear against the bedspread. “Fancy sleeping on marked territory?”

Ollamayne scowled. “As you like.”

Breyolt casually spread his legs wide. “Are you going to stay, a fly on the wall, while Llera inevitably propositions me? I’m not interested in men; it’s nothing personal. But I suppose you can watch if you must.”

The bongo smiled broadly and said, “what a pleasant change of topic. I had wanted to write ballads about your exploits, be they in the bed or battlefield. You’re a very popular man with the nobility. I receive many requests, ‘please Ollie, a song about His Grace the Duke of Linalita,’ but I’ve been telling my fans I would work with you, not in spite of you.”

“Just stay in a corner or something. Don’t make a peep. I can’t get it up if you’re warbling like a dawn bird.”

“That’s right, about my comment before…” Ollamayne trailed off and received an expectant look from Breyolt. “The way they talk about you I thought you had a third leg. I was expressing my disappointment that you were merely on the large end of average, and not god-like.”

Breyolt grimaced. “But there is only one god, and I’m not like her at all.”

Breyolt and Ollamayne heard heavy footsteps outside the door, and both arched their backs as if to spring up at whoever was about to enter the room. As the door pushed open, Ollamayne, who was better positioned to see their guest first, exhaled his held breath in a dramatic whoosh. As he did so a handsome, confident older gentleman ram strode in, closing the door behind him and looking between the other two for a moment. He smoothed down his leather jacket, under which he wore a chain shirt. Emblazoned on the backs of his gloves was a symbol of some kind that Breyolt could not identify: three roses on a white shield.

“Captain,” Ollamayne said without any inflection at all.

“Hello Ollie. And this must be the Duke himself. Your Grace,” and here he laughed bleatingly, “done all that reasonless killing in the nude, did you?”

“Fuck off, whoever you are.”

“Tetchy bastard, aren’t you? Where’s Llera, anyhow?”

“Now hold on,” Breyolt interrupted, placing his hands on his knees, “that symbol, I recognize it now. Your ilk lined the gutters of a few cities I sacked. I don’t know how you can exist if our ‘divine god-queen’ isn’t just milking you for misery. Tell me, do you weep like a family when a mercenary dies in whatever little milksop arrangement you’ve got? Or do you mark their name off the roster and pout about a profit loss? Piss-drinking sell-sword scum. What in the hell are you doing here? Guarding the bard and his seditious burlesques?”

The ram, to his credit, did not bat an eye at all Breyolt’s petulant prodding. He had a world-weary bearing, scarred like Breyolt but even more grey. Instead of talking back or answering one of Breyolt’s many questions, the ram fondled the pommel of the broadsword on his hip and made his way to an elegant chair with a blue and gold ivy pattern on the cushions. He was an oddly brutal picture contrasted with the room’s elegance.

Breyolt snorted and turned his head to thoroughly examine an oil painting of a rosebush.

Ollamayne coughed once before speaking. “The viscountess will not be joining us, but you’ll see her soon enough, Captain,” he said with a nod toward the ram. “Breyolt, tell me, do you think we mean to harm you?”

“No, I think you mean to suffer me your grand ideas of usurpation.”

“Who then do you ally yourself with?” interrupted the captain.

“How dare you address me without introducing yourself? Captain? Captain what? Fleece? Meat?”

“Captain Hautross.”

“Fine. Now, my loyalty is first and foremost to myself, but you already knew that. I do what pleases me, and if it happens to please the Queen, then happy day.”

Hautross rested his elbow on his knee and turned his head to Ollamayne. “You really think you’re going to get him to work with you?” he said.

“Yes, dear bard, what is it you and the voluminous viscountness want of me?” Breyolt interrupted, “if it is matters of the heart, then surely you know,” here he boastfully looked to the captain, “I’ve already had Llera a number of times.”

The captain spit on the floor, nothing else.

“Must swordsmen spit like drooling camels? Before we discuss that, I would like to pose a different question to you, Your Grace.” Ollamayne’s tone had settled into serious. “Who do you reckon betrayed you to the Queen?”

“Everyone with the opportunity to do so. The denizens of the court are fawners to a one. You, Ollamayne, are the first I would suspect. Lucius, the Queen’s glorified pet would have every reason to shore himself up by telling her my every move.” Breyolt paused, thinking of Carmot, thinking of her face and her voice. “Throw in every other animal in the palace, no, the world, even Linalita, and you understand the scope of my suspicion. But none of that matters if she is as all-seeing as she would like us to believe. She knows my mind and my actions. My future and my past. I struggle, truly struggle, to understand why intelligent beings such as yourselves, if you believe her and worship her, would entertain any notions of disobedience. Unless…” Breyolt laughed suddenly, loudly. “Oh, that’s as sweet as meat.”

Ollamayne shared a look with Hautross.

“What do you think of the grand chamberlain?” Hautross had lit a pipe and puffed at it slowly. His eyes and odd pupils were slates of grey mystery which Breyolt could not read.

“The House of Parlesse have been servants of the Queen for generations. Glottie is no different, and in fact, I am the least suspicious of her. She bears no ill will toward anyone. She’s like a pet; the Queen has done away with any higher order thinking other than unflinching loyalty. By the way, I was this close to ploughing her just the other day, but noticed some the Her Utmost’s perfume on her. So much for Virgin Queen, eh?”

“Preposterous. That’s plenty, shut him up.”

Ollamayne held up his arm. “Now wait a minute,” he interrupted, “that is a shade of information I am quite happy to hear! Imagine the fanfare when I write about this secret love!  Music is news, and the public will be so pleased to know the Queen has finally chosen a mate.”

Breyolt and Hautross coughed in unison, and Breyolt picked up the thought they shared. “It is not so simple. We are like toys to her, you see. I am a toy soldier.” He sat up as straight as he could. “And you are a music box. Glottina is a doll. To be played with by its owner. To say there is anything between them like love, indeed, that the Queen is capable of such a thing as love, is absurd, and foolish, and a bit naïve for a wiseacre like you.”

“I’m no one’s toy,” said Hautross.

“Everyone belongs to someone else. We all belong to her, whether we are members of the nobility or crawling on our bellies in the mud like all mercenaries. Listen Hautross, I said ‘we,’ I included you.”

“That bit about you being a toy soldier. Breyolt,” Ollamayne paused to gauge the wolf’s reaction to being addressed with such familiarity. He saw none. “Is that all you consider yourself?”

Breyolt smiled, baring his teeth. “Yes. I am the Queen’s favorite. I am the most highly decorated, the most skilled, the most cunning and powerful of all her soldiers. I have legions under my command. I do the work which she deems so important – the destruction of her detractors, of those who do not worship her with appropriately slavish devotion. Bear that in mind when you speak to me of conspiracies and reckonings, which you are sure to share with me soon. Bear that in mind when you ask a man who has killed hundreds in the name of the Queen’s honor to join your misguided cause against her.”

Without allowing interruption, Breyolt continued, “Say, Hautross. You’re a sellsword. How much did they pay you? I can pay you double to kill them. A mercenary is a soldier in sheep’s clothing, get it? And I know how soldiers think. Plots aren’t your forte. I can ensure you a little action. I can give you some blood.”

“Unfortunately, this is something I’m not doing for money. It’s not even a contract. Your money is useless, not that you could ever claim any of your possessions ever again after escaping the Queen’s dungeon. You’re anathema. Your face is going to be on a poster in every tavern, every notice board, and the legions hunting the bounty on your head might just eclipse those you’ve commanded in your glorious past.”

“Are you here to take my head back to the Queen for a shiny gold coin and the accolades? Think she’ll bestow a title on unsworn filth like you?”

Captain Hautross, ever unfazed, smiled tiredly in Breyolt’s direction. His eyes went right through him.

“In another life you’d be a mercenary too. Is all this animosity some kind of archaic predatory instinct? Ollie, why don’t you feed this hungry dog? He won’t stop barking.”

“You’re participating in this farce of jejune rebellion. That is enough for me to be at your throat. But, yes, Ollie, my stomach’s as empty as the Queen’s heart. Isn’t it time we were served a repast?”

Ollamayne shrugged and ducked his horns under the doorframe, disappearing beyond the closing door.

Now alone, Hautross rolled his jaw as a ruminant does and Breyolt, expecting foul play of the most obvious variety, eyed him with suspicion. Breyolt’s eyes darted to the sword on his belt; he was sure he could steal it. Stand, muse and think aloud, continue the discussion. Get close enough for a quick half-step, unsheathe the blade and carry the momentum upward to slit his throat. Undress him, don his clothes, escape out the window. Breyolt was sure he could do all this. But he was not sure why he did not while he had the chance.

“I serve two things, Your Grace.” Hautross interrupted Breyolt’s mental plans with his gruff voice.  “Currency, and family. The Queen’s desires are not my interest. But my wife has needs that I seek to fulfill and I must put food on the table for my children. Currency is power, and one day the merchants of the world will buy the Queen’s throne out from under her.”

Breyolt’s shoulders shook with contemptuous laughter. “You really think that’s true, don’t you? I’ve never heard such stupidity, even among the most truculent rebels. These beliefs that the Queen can be resisted, bought, bargained with, are all those of a child-fool. She is immune to all such doings. The pen nor the sword will make her bend her neck. The merchants will boil in pots. The greatest armies the world can amass against her will stain the soil and nothing more. These are the teachings of her malodorous monarchy. Teachings that until now I was unaware anyone flouted but me. But you, you are wasting your time. Your will cannot match mine, and it is will alone that matters here. I am her only rival. Either I shall have her, or I shall die. But I’ll die with a smile.”

“I don’t understand. You seem convinced of her omnipotence, yet so eager to test it, to act against it. We are of a different mind. Different minds, as can different species, different backgrounds, work together. I ask you man to man to continue to hear us out. That fop cannot understand truly what we intend to do in this. I respect and appreciate your participation so far. If you are stripped of your title, your lands and all else, you shall have a place in my company if you so desire. Then at least you can die with honor, whether or not you bear a grin.”

“Fine,” Breyolt snapped, “so be it. Now, where in all hell is my dinner?”

Hautross stood and paced the room once or twice while Breyolt followed him with his eyes. The ram’s boots thudded quietly and they could hear the faint sounds of talking from below the floor. The ram sat back in his chair and looked out the window at the setting sun.

As they waited the wounds Breyolt had sustained seemed to pulse back to life. The bruises under his fur, the untended wounds with the dried black blood; they, with his heartbeat, reminded him that he was mortal. The scars Carmot had reopened felt as if they might never close again. The trails of them in his fur were her reminder that she had spared his life, and that she might not again. He regretted not giving her more a few in return before she capered off.

Ollamayne entered quietly. “Fellows, we’ll not be eating tonight; the establishment is overwhelmed with Llerandie’s appetites and those of the men downstairs. Tighten your belts, ah,” naked Breyolt gave him a sour look, “well, clench your guts up.”

“Bloody useless, this whole endeavor. You want me to work with you, eh, poet? I’m going to die starving on these silk fucking sheets if you don’t put something in my mouth.”

“He said it’s Llera’s doing, and we need the men fed in case there’s a hunting party after us.”

“So say you, and what the fuck do you know about the esteemed viscountess?” Breyolt replied, “and what does it matter? You and the poet can kneel in the damned dirt and chew on grass and thistles until you’re full! I’m going to eat one of you if I don’t have a meal, mark my words. You’re creating a rabid, cannibalistic urge in me, so you know – so you’re prepared!”

“Come off it, such whinging doesn’t suit you one thread,” replied Hautross. “And with regards to Llera, she and I have two lovely daughters, thank you.”

Breyolt made an uncouth noise with his mouth, “may they live long and be as stupendously fuckable as their mother. Now, unless you’d like to keep taking the piss out of me, I’ve got to go do it myself.”

Ollamayne remained between Breyolt and the door, shaking his head. “Not without the bag and the leash.”


	11. A King's Ransom

Breyolt awoke, the insides of his stomach being scraped cruelly by hunger. Blearily he lifted his head to find the room dark and Ollamayne nowhere to be found. After his chat with the troubadour and with the spineless mercenary, Breyolt had sought to get some rest, seeing as food and freedom were both scarce. Now he pondered escape, but found his right arm chained to the bedpost.

“To prevent you from escape and self-pleasure both.” Llerandie said as she entered, a larking lilt in her voice. She was carrying a candle, and a plate of bread and cheese.

Breyolt huffed impertinently. “My left hand is no amateur.”

Llerandie maneuvered her bovid bulk into the room, setting the plate down on the bed and the candle on a bedside table.

“Come for what your husband can’t give you anymore, I trust?”

The springbok pulled over a chair and sat herself down heavily, to its creaking laments.

“Must you?” she sighed.

“I find japery disarms my opponents both verbal or otherwise.”

“I carry no weapon, verbal or otherwise.”

“We shall see.”

Breyolt reached the plate with his left hand and dragged it toward him. He began to feed himself. Even foodstuff other than meat had him salivating, for he had been starved. The bread was soft and had a good, crispy crust; the cheese sharp.

After a moment of quiet, Llerandie took a breath. “If I may tell you a story…?”

“If you must.”

“Then listen well. Once, when I was younger and not yet a mother, I was a priestess in the Order Divinum. Have you ever visited the Temple of Grace in Aurelia? The libraries therein? I marveled at how they soared, shelves stacked to dizzying heights and ladders spread across them. Though there were many things for a girl to read – fantasies and books of poetry from the most gifted writers in the world, philosophies, treatises – I found myself drawn to the histories. Many of my sisters were historians, it was one of only two choices. I read volume after volume – do you know how far they stretch back?”

“Her Utmost makes eternity seem like a momentary trifle. Very far, I imagine. They do not teach history in Cvaravald, except as it relates to war.”

“To understand war is to understand much. But I digress, there is a volume, volume one, which in the first chapter simply states ‘She reigns.’ By the way, no one knows who wrote these books; many think them originally penned by the Queen herself.”

Breyolt grunted. “Are you trying to intimidate me again? Whose side are you on? I would think the architect of schemes against her would find ways to defame her, to weaken her image, not espouse her greatness and immortality.”

“Defaming her cannot be done, so it is pointless. But I’m not finished yet. Breyolt, there have been those like you in the past. There have been those who rebel against the Queen in more than thought. Who openly scoffed at notions of her surpassing infinity, who spoke ill of her in public to those who listened.”

“And they all died.”

“Perhaps. There are many examples.”

“Oh?”

“’Long ago, when the world was sand, Her Utmost created life, shaped the mountains and rivers, parted the oceans, begat the greenery.’ She came here in an earthly form. An avatar. She separated the fabric of reality and stepped through it as through a curtain. For a while, she lived in the remaining sands, in a great palace, about which bloomed an oasis of unparalleled yield and beauty. She ate honey and fruit and inspired poets and musicians with her serenity and beauty.

Every day paradise sprang around that oasis. It spread. Prosperity grew. But mortals, Breyolt, we are creatures of ambition, and that ambition is cruel and unwise.  Though there was no crime, no suffering, no sickness, they schemed against her. They resented her vanity, to merely enjoy life but not improve it? They wanted things, why did she not grant them? When they passed in their sleep, why did she not bring them back? It wasn’t long, merely a hundred years of peace before and attempt was made on her life. Her attacker ‘was wrought into dust.’”

Breyolt swallowed. “I already know she is dangerous. That you lot indulge yourselves to get into her good graces, act like all is well—”

“All is not well. The ancients were just like us, they thought themselves kings, and were struck down for their self-serving rebellion. She must have known it was all coming. Do you know why there are no scientists in the direct employ of the Queen? She knows everything. They merely ask her and she’ll say ‘not quite’ or ‘almost there.’ Like a parent playfully withholding an answer from a babe. They build a model of the solar system and she laughs at their ignorance. Our ignorance. Our mortality, our lack of sight and knowledge, it all amuses her.”

“I thought you were going to tell me about the great rebels of the past?”

“Yes. Everyone knows about the dragons, but do you know _why_ they are nearly extinct?”

“I hear tell they are exceptionally tender delicacies reserved only for the Queen and her inner circle.”

“Absolute nonsense.” Llerandie smoothed down her dress, a shift that hung in folds of silk. “In the past, dragons were abnormally proud creatures. They were powerful, other reptiles were like gnats to them. And though they were long-lived, they too were mortal… Some two thousand years ago, before the historians began using the new calendar with her adjusted months, the dragons were very close to her. They were her generals, her courtiers, her closest advisors. Others lived in fear of their size, power, cunning and ferocity. Some were quite large, not like the dragons we see today who are roughly equal to us.”

“Master Hargrave, fat coward that he is, a runt?”

“Comparatively. These beings towered over us, yet she treated them like pets. One day, their largest, a monstrosity who took up an entire wing of his own palace, decreed himself equal to Her Utmost. In fact, he declared her to be his bride, and he her groom, so madly was he in love with her.”

Breyolt choked on his bread.

“His name was something like… ‘Snylzeddoor.’ Her former esteemed general, retired due to there simply being nothing left to do. He had put down rebellions with his breath and the fear of his presence alone. There is a beautiful illustration of his mangled corpse in volume three. He had served her dutifully, year after year, into what was draconic middle age. Tales of his exploits were celebrated – he was a hero, beloved by all. So favored was he that it is said she deigned to sit with him at his table in his palace and dine with him. He could gobble up three rather fat individuals in one bite. Every citizen respected him and tales of him, the tooth-filled smiling soldier who appeared in parades behind the Queen, the deaths of countless rebel schemers on his celebrated talons.

But fame and adoration weren’t enough, as they never seem to be. You see, mere minutes after he made his decree, his ‘Fool’s Edict,’ surrounded by his assistants, court, and public, his flesh began to flay itself, his bones began to grind to dust within him, his muscles unraveled. His screams were said to curdle milk and boil water. As his blood and sinew poured through his palace, his body sloughing into a sea with islands of yellow fat amidst, the All-Queen appeared. Though his head was larger than her body she placed her arms against it, cradling it, a skull of disintegrating scales. She stayed with him until he died. The volume quotes her, ‘For your being so blind.’”

Breyolt thumped his chest several times with his fist, hiccupped, and swallowed. “It sounds as if his stupidity outweighed him, unbelievably. So what? If she wanted to punish me, she would have. I don’t care if I’m favored or not. I want what I can’t have, you see. That is what kept me going in my youth, in my training, and in my battles. Want. Need. The world is unfair and skewed and everyone knows that. I’ve fought enough, bore enough scars for her. I demand something in return other than a fucking medal. A medal with her picture on it! And her blithe flattery!”

Llerandie waited for Breyolt to catch his breath, her eyes flitting from his teeth to his restraints. It took him a few moments. He slouched and stared at the empty plate, dotted with only the smallest crumbs.

“I see there’s no stopping you. You said she does not display her omnipotence, no, perhaps not, at least in ways we can see. The history books, however, tell us otherwise. I thought it might change your mind to know.”

“I’m not going to back down over a fairytale. Tell me your scheme. If it’s good, and ends with me in bed with her, I’m in.”

“And if she’s a lesbian?”

Breyolt bit his lip. “Confound it, don’t muddy the matter with what ifs! I’m positive she has a flame burning for me. She just needs a bit of convincing.”

Llerandie covered her face with her hooves and dragged them down so the whites of her eyes showed, “you’re an idiot.”

“An idiot with a big sword, a big vocabulary, and a big c—”

“Shut up, Breyolt.”

\--

It became morning after Llerandie took her leave and left Breyolt to sleep a few hours more. In his dreams he ran, or chased. He could feel something just behind him, yet sought something ahead. He heard the screams of his mother as she left the palace that day. Anger. Left his world. He knew he would never see her again, even though he was a young man. He tasted blood, and felt all his scars open and pouring red down his arms and legs. He coughed and awoke with spittle in his throat, drool on the down pillow underneath his head.

Ollamayne and Hautross were there with the bag and the leash. Breyolt sighed and flopped his head back down, determined to make collaring him an ordeal. Lacking strength, it wasn’t much of one. One or the other of them led him down the stairs into the morning quiet of the empty tavern. When they took him outside, the air bit at him angrily, and his shoulders raised tightly together. Moments later he stumbled up the steps of the carriage, where he smelled Llerandie’s warmth.

“A moment for Eien to mount his horse.”

Breyolt spoke up, “don’t you hooved ever bristle at the very idea of your unevolved cousins being used so?”

“Breyolt, to you and your ilk, even thinking creatures are food. I can’t believe you still have salt on your tongue.”

“My tongue is dry, in need of honey.”

“You’ll get not that. Silence, Breyolt; we ride.”

The carriage rumbled to life. It would be several hours of relatively brisk travel before the next stop, where everyone but Breyolt took lunch. No one spoke to him, and only occasionally did he hear Llerandie commanding the drivers. Even Ollamayne was uncharacteristically silent. After lunch, they continued onward. When it grew to be night, the carriage pulled off the road into some uneven terrain, and those on the team pitched a camp. Breyolt slept on the earth, a bag over his head, his arms tied, and his leash tied to the carriage wheel. Only Llerandie slept in the carriage, he guessed. There was no room or desire for others. The wolf’s untreated wounds still burned as fiercely as the adjacent flames. The fire was no comfort to his aching stomach and frustrated mind. He was too tired to chew through the rope, though he knew he could. He doubted he would get far before being run down or shot with an arrow.

He hadn’t felt so helpless in a long time. Before he slept, he remembered the last time he thought himself so close to death. It was in Westaur, a trade port boasting a huge collection of markets and shipyards. He had been commanding a unit personally, eager to take the city and kill the merchant barons who had blasphemed the Queen by shirking their responsibilities to the crown. The guildhouse where the merchants holed up had protection of its own, and the city guard assisted them, outflanking Breyolt, who had been assured of their loyalty to the Queen. He personally killed four of them before the others cut down his men and took him into custody.

He was tossed into the local gaol while they negotiated his release, but he was soon told negotiations had failed. The Queen had left her loyal soldier, her general, to die. They didn’t treat his wounds, for he was already a dead man. The gashes and bruises he sustained during his capture were open, bright, and angry. They kept him in darkness for days, feeding him nothing, and splashing water on him to keep him from sleeping. By the end of it, he was so weak he could barely stand. The pristine cell became smeared with his blood, which dried into stains in shapes that even now he could picture clearly. Remembering it now, he could not picture how he escaped the situation, and drowsily supposed all his life from that point could be the fading dream of a dying man. Then he fell asleep.

Someone kicked him awake and pushed him back into the carriage. Another day’s travel passed, wherein he thought he was beginning to go mad. The food Llerandie had brought him two nights prior now seemed like dry, tasteless torture, and he needed water. But someone had muzzled him to keep him silent, and he could not ask. They were tired of hearing him angrily castigate them.

Near the end of the day, the carriage began to ride smoothly, as on paved stone. Breyolt had not the strength to sit up or be excited. He knew only that he was somewhere, and there was nowhere he would have felt glad to be. He heard people talking, the sounds of vendors hawking hot beverages for the cold night. He smelled civilization, and cursed it for it was unavailable to him. Soon the carriage slowed, then stopped. Clanking metal armor preceded disembarking from the carriage and being grabbed roughly by hands in gauntlets.

Breyolt could barely stand, but they dragged him all the same. He was indoors, he knew that. He smelled fine food and perfume, and animal reek. Beneath his paw pads were plush rugs and smooth, polished stone.  Wherever he was going, he used what little strength he had left to keep his tail out from between his legs. This effort was rewarded when someone kicked him in the back and he fell to his knees. The bag was pulled off his head. His muzzle was removed.

In front Breyolt sprawled a grand throne room, bluish marble flooring rising into smooth walls of hewn stone. Tapestries lined the walls with crests he wracked his brain to identify. The sounds of a court were missing, and in fact there was a strange silence. Several yards from him, a dais rose up four steps, and at the top sat a throne, and on that throne sat an overstuffed pincushion of a maned wolf, older than him, whose lanky anatomy was subsumed in ponderous rolls of flab, the bulging of his great belly, and an arse that nearly met the arms of his royal seat. Adorning him were robes of green, white, and gold, and atop his head sat a garish grown, suited to a man’s tastes, dotted with proud emeralds.

Breyolt wheezed dramatically. He looked around and saw Hautross kneeling and Llerandie performing her best curtsey, her eyes closed so as to hide her expression. Ollamayne was nowhere to be seen.

As he came to his senses, the man before him began to receive platters brought by naked servants. These were platters of fine food, lobsters, salted fish, figs and forcemeat. Cakes with royal icing. Goblets of wine and beer that had Breyolt licking his lips. Without acknowledging him, the fat load of wolf began to eat. The sight was particularly grotesque given Breyolt’s current vigor, and he growled enviously.

From out of nowhere came a ghoulish giggle, giving Breyolt a start.

“Snap snap, lilt a tune, here’s a growling old buffoon! Lost his place, lost his face, not fit to even call ‘Your Grace!’”

It was the voice of a harlequin, a lady jester in a piebald suit of red and white. She was had a strong hourglass figure, top heavy, and Breyolt could not imagine her doing cartwheels, try as he might. Her tail bounced as she laughed and smiled and showed her teeth, the frightening fangs of a hyena, who could crunch bone even better than he. A carefully sculpted white mask with gold decorations hid her features, only the barest hints of grey, spotted fur sticking out from the cuffs of her jumpsuit. The expressionless mask accentuated her fearsome, yellowed teeth purposefully.

“Good fucking goddess, even the Queen doesn’t have a jester,” Breyolt snapped.

Breyolt could see her golden eye wink at him through one of the eyeholes, but he could not understand the intent of it. Then she pressed herself against him and snarled loudly, her body close enough that he could appreciate the full tits stretching the fabric of her suit. Too bad she was a madwoman.

The wolf up on the dais held up his hand and the jester sashayed to the side of the throne, where she began juggling colored balls without a care. After this, he continued to eat performatively for several interrupted minutes, the only sounds in the chamber those of his eating chewing and drinking. It was an obvious scheme to unnerve the captive audience, and it worked quite well. Breyolt was pissed at this display of wanton gluttony, as if he were back in the queen’s court and couldn’t have a bite of the fare on display. His stomach rumbled and he felt his lip quivering.

“How pathetic,” the jester sneered at Breyolt, “you’ve become. Hungry? Starved?” She picked up a bunch of red grapes and dropped them back on the table. “You want some?”

Finally, smacking his lips after sucking a shellfish dry, the maned wolf spoke, “Breyolt, Breyolt, your father groans in his grave. His son, reduced to this. He was a great man, and a compatriot of mine, if you’ll believe it. We were once close to the Queen; ensorcelled so as young men often are by her beauty. With him dead, and as far as you’ve fallen, Breyolt… Oh, do not worry, for it is my intent to build you back up.” His words were wet with grease and his voice the quintessence of condescension.

Breyolt was silent. He tried to remember which fat fucking royal this was, since he was so intent on eating than introducing himself properly, and settled on King Rolande of the Tanor bloodline. And that meant he was in Eastern Aurivir.

“The Viscountess Antilopine spoke very highly of you. She also spoke that you could be swayed. Will you, in my court, in front of witnesses, prove her in error, and thus deserving of punishment?”

Breyolt remained silent. He could really have used some water. He bowed his head. This made Rolande smile and stroke his belly idly while he quaffed a goblet of wine.

“She has told you what I instructed her to tell you. In my wisdom, I decided less was more. Now I speak to you the simple truth of it all. I want you to fight for me, and you will. I want you to stir up the Queen’s ire, and to kill her favorites.”

Eventually, Breyolt answered, “I beg your pardon, good fool, but I would like to hear from the King again,” and his eyes flitted to the jester. She appeared unable to keep herself from cackling after trying admirably to hold it in. The king not so. His black canine lips curled into a toothy frown.

“Unwise. You have been without water, I estimate, for four days? In your defiance you only crawl into a most agonizing death. Much more agonizing than a beheading. I want what you want, Breyolt. I want a new order.”

“I want to rub my arse on her throne, and my cock on her nethers, and I doubt I shall be availed either if I am under your employ. Look see, you bought a viscountess, whose lands lie within yours, how convenient, and you got some old mercenary as a bonus because she’s had his children. Now you want me. Do you think that is enough? Do you think all the mortals,” Breyolt coughed dryly, “on earth can stand up to one iota of her will?” He felt a twinge crawl up his back. He half convinced himself, but that wasn’t enough to get him to resign his goal and go mewling back to the Queen. He was living a double life, thinking double thoughts, of strange fear and angry desire both.

Rolande picked at the cluster of grapes Breyolt had been staring at. They were so close, yet out of reach. On a gold dish no less. The plump, sweet fruit looked better than anything to his starved belly and dried throat.

“Jibes, followed by philosophy, fail you in your endeavor to ease my plans from my lips. It is very simple, Breyolt, very fucking simple,” his composure melted away like ice in Hell, “I want you to swing your sword for me, like you do for her!” he roared. “You’re a good boy, but a boy nonetheless. You’re also a servant. You’re not a duke any longer. Serve me instead of her and you shall near your goal better than you will alone. No amount of complaint will make that fact untrue. By my scepter, I can get you closer to her throat than your trembling legs ever could.”

“Do you have it on good authority that my titles have been stripped of me?”

This time it was Rolande’s turn not to answer. He chose instead to tear apart sweetrolls chew noisily. His fangs masticated like the rapacious animal he was, bits of bread falling onto his velvet robes.

Breyolt huffed. He would have folded his arms if they weren’t locked behind him. “Duke or not, I’m not killing anyone for you. Especially not her favorites. Some of her favorites are my favorites, damn them.”

Llerandie spoke this time, her voice to Breyolt’s right, shaking with rage. “If you thought your campaign against the Queen would not have harmed us, you’ve got even more holes in your head than it appears! Do you think anything through? Anything?”

Rolande’s glance quieted the viscountess. The jester snorted with laughter. Breyolt imagined her tumbling as part of a diversion for the nobles and it looked in his head like an hourglass falling down some stairs. That, actually, made him laugh a little.

“I want you to kill Count Vertagne of Aurdor. After your father cut down the nobility there, the Queen installed the tiger to rebuild it. She likes him for his ruthlessness, not to mention his strength. No hints of rebellion there since.”

“Kill the count,” the jester mimicked, “kill him dead! Not like a king to share his bread. Bless our king, though he’s rotund,” she broke into laughter again, “for allowing us a bit of fun!”

The corners of Breyolt’s mouth tugged upward at her antics. “Why?”

“To upset her. To vex her.”

“Ugh, you’re even more foolhardy than me. Very well, I suppose, but if you want me to kill anyone else, I decide on an individual basis. I will not hurt Glottina DuParlesse, Orlei Holdst, Llerandie Boveeda, or Carmot.”

“Four women. How telling. Well, perish the thought. The Viscountess Antilopine is right here. I am certain that if indeed I want anyone else dead, it will not be her or those you listed so heroically.”

Breyolt shrugged. “So be it. Get me some fucking water and a sword.”

Rolande guffawed, but waved away the food and drink. “Have some decorum. I am your King now. Address me as such.”

Breyolt feigned reverence. “Your Majesty, might I be availed of some water, dearly needed, and a fucking blade to do your cowardly, backhanded dirty work?”

\--

Breyolt received water, which he drank like a fish that had spent a great deal of time on land. He drank for what seemed like forever, only stopping when the wooden bucket emptied.

Llerandie stood in his meager quarters making a face at the austere palliasse and flimsy wooden chair. She raised her head and called in a buzzing timbre unique to her species. Soon after two thin young girls, not older than sixteen, entered the room, their horns not yet fully grown. Both antelopes. They were wearing beautiful dresses, one of blue, one of yellow. In response to their entering, Breyolt sat up stock still, but winced when his wounds ached. The patch job a wizened old barber surgeon had performed on him left something to be desired, and that something was clear alcohol.

“Breyolt. This is Allana, and this is Bereni.” The two girls curtseyed as their names were called. Allana looked just like her mother in her youth, but had eyes more like Captain Hautross. Her smile was guileless and she held her sister’s hand in a carefree sort of way. Bereni, obviously more serious than her sister, beheld Breyolt with a judgmental gaze and polite silence. Between the two of them, Breyolt, and their mother, there was barely any room in the small, stony chamber.

Breyolt’s tone settled into one very soft, one Llerandie could not recall ever hearing, “a real and true pleasure. I heard about you girls when you were born, but there are no children in the Queen’s palace, so meeting you would have necessitated an excursion to these lands. I see you are both as beautiful as your mother, if you don’t mind an old wolf like me saying.”

They looked to Llerandie, who nodded, and Bereni said primly, “mother wished only for us to meet you briefly. Suffice it to say this has satisfied our curiosity. It is a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a Duke, however former that title may be.”

Breyolt laughed freely, “my goddess, you really are her daughters.”

“We’re sorry to see you in such a mess,” Allana said with sincere sympathy. Bereni glared at her.

“That’s enough. I just wanted you to see him,” Llerandie said, motioning her snout toward the door. “You’ll have your father with you for dinner tonight, isn’t that a treat? Tell him I may be late.”

The girls nodded automatically and slowly withdrew from the room with all the grace characteristic of their breed and breeding.

Breyolt sighed and leaned back against the wall behind the palliasse. “Don’t tell me you’ve wrapped them up in this.”

“They are loyal to their mother and father, but I cannot call them part of all this. No, I merely… Wanted you to meet them, for one reason or another. Thank you for being so polite.”

“Sentimentality is strange coming from you after your treatment of me.” He sighed deeply. “I figured us for a tryst when I first saw you at the palace, but seeing them, even if you wanted to, I simply couldn’t have, and I’m glad I didn’t. Hautross is a lucky stiff, Llera.”

Llerandie sighed under her breath and didn’t reply for a while. When she spoke again her voice had discarded its wistful tone for a more severe one.

“You understand that as a wanted man, you will travel in something of a disguise, and under great cover.”

As she spoke, Breyolt’s eyes traced over the stitching in her elaborate gown, wondering if he would have been happier as a tailor. The Queen’s royal tailor seemed perfectly happy, he recalled. He pondered on the gold stitching forming a band of ivy trailing all the way around the springbok’s middle. Then he admired the puffy sleeves that hung down around her soft arms.

“Are you listening?”

“I was admiring your dress. Women’s clothing always has a certain something.”

“I’ll buy you a dress once this is all finished, if you so desire.”

Breyolt made a face. “Not a very well-thought-out plan. Putting me under cover? My voice carries. Am I to be completely silent? I’m a soldier, not an assassin.”

“Now that you mention it, maybe we should muzzle you for the duration of the effort.”

“Will an escort suffice?” the duke asked somewhat sheepishly.

“Yes. Eien—Captain Hautross will accompany you, if only to guide you. Once you arrive in Aurdor there will be a contingent of co-conspirators to meet you. They will assist in the killing, and ensure it isn’t done all that quietly. But ideally, Breyolt, no one will know it’s you.”

“Except the All-Queen?”

“Except her. I didn’t want to throw my lot in with the King, you know. Not originally. I love the All-Queen. I want her favor. But I don’t want my daughters being wrapped up in court intrigue. I want them free of it, and perhaps if the order is upset, if things are changed…”

“Oh, Llera…” Breyolt lamented, shaking his head.

“Fuck the consequences. I want a chance at something different. If we’re wrong, then so be it. We’ll all die. But I wager none of us are very long for this world, gilded cages or not.”

“Worry not, I’ll do it. I have no choice, you saw to that. I don’t want to be killed in this backwater kingdom by that boil of a king. I’ll do everything I can under his command, but I will not be loyal to him.”

“So be it.”


	12. The Band Gathers

Hautross was barely finished polishing a rusted old medallion when Breyolt entered with Llerandie in front of him. The springbok and the ram embraced and their lips met. Breyolt sighed silently and pulled a chair over.

The room was large enough to seat a dozen and filled with equipment displayed on the walls. Suits of armor, swords, trunks and shelves full to bursting with folded jerkins, surcoats, and assorted livery. Shields with the same obnoxious crests from the throne room sat leaned against the corners, and polearms stood more nobly than any city guard Breyolt imagined had ever carried them. The table at which Breyolt sat was covered in scratch marks from daggers stuck into the wood. He grabbed one by the handle and examined the blade. Shoddy worksmanship, the blacksmith must have been underpaid. Or drunk.

“You expect me to slit throats with this?” Breyolt lifted the dagger above his head and made a jabbing motion.

Llerandie turned and stepped away from Hautross, who spoke, “Time to speak to you at length. You’re what the King wants, and he has paid me handsomely, so we’re bedfellows now. Listen with care. We’re going to outfit you and we’re going to discuss the plan for Aurdor. You’re going to be under cover. Ever done that?”

“I wear a medallion on my chest so big it thumps when I walk. What do you think?”

“Very well—”

“Where is my medallion?”

“Likely in your apartments in the Queen’s palace,” Llerandie mused. “Want to go back and fetch it?”

Breyolt grit his teeth. “Working for her is over, perhaps it would be best to have it melted down. Symbolic and all that.”

“I’m sure it’s already been done. Carry on, Hautross.”

“Alright.” Hautross lifted open the lid of a dark brown trunk with metal furnishings. From it he retrieved a slate gray surcoat with a hood sewn on. He rolled it over in his hands and examined it closely before tossing it onto the table in front of Breyolt. This was followed by a padded hauberk of thick cloth, a pair of pants and boots of the same material, and a sword belt.

Breyolt began dressing himself, finally hiding the underclothes he had been given with presentable attire. Llerandie averted her eyes and Hautross observed him carefully. Half way into his pants the wolf fumbled with his left leg and fell onto the stone floor with a frightful clatter of metal and fabric. Quickly he gathered himself up and slipped into the hauberk and surcoat. The fit was uncomfortable; a little tight under the arms. And in the groin.

“You don’t have anything else?”

“This is suited to the task. I hope you understand I won’t be giving you a weapon until we’re in Aurdor. There is an element of risk involved with a wolf like you running around the palace here. Best to keep you defanged.” Hautross closed the lid of the trunk forcefully and pulled out a chair for Llerandie. She sat while he stood, one hand on the pommel of his sword.

Across the table, Breyolt waited for someone to say something. His yellow eyes fixed expectantly on Llerandie, but again Hautross spoke.

“I’ll accompany you. She’ll not. The group will be as such: you, myself, Lieutenant May, and my mate Tija. Both are accomplished mercenaries but I won’t bore you with the history. We’ll be leaving tonight.”

Llerandie was not looking at either of the men, instead at her hands, which wrestled with each other for sense.

“Four to assassinate a count. I trust you will tell me more on the way? These friends of yours are loyal?”

“Our spilled blood has intermingled in the earth. They are in my company. And I will tell you all you need to know when you need to know it, understand? You’ll need to reign yourself in, so that’s what I want you to practice.”

Breyolt snorted, “’reign myself in?’ You make it sound as if we’re attending a dinner party and a droplet of poison will be deftly delivered during a witty exchange about the best exports in Aurdor – beer and headstones.”

“Poison was deemed too unreliable. We need to see a major artery opened up. I’d like to watch him die and confirm it myself if possible. That’s why there are four of us. Three for cover, one for the deed.”

Breyolt’s expression leveled to serious. “Who?”

“You will kill him. We will enable you to.”

Leaning back in his chair Breyolt began to stretch and shift his arms and legs. He turned his head left and right and stomped his feet within the boots. He lifted one foot up to check the sole – soft –  and placed it back down while adjusting the tight cuffs of the hauberk and shaking out the length of the surcoat.

“This will do nothing in close quarters. An arrow will pierce it, a bullet is no question. It will do little against a bludgeon or a means to impale. All this is good for us complicating my silhouette, you understand that? Are you dressing me up to take a fall so you can find the glory in Vertagne’s throat?”

“This is a clandestine enterprise,” Llerandie finally spoke in a hushed tone, a quick one that lashed like a whip, “and you will be supported by experts. You’re not going into war, Breyolt. With luck no one will even see you do it. Do you know the meaning of the word, stealth? Or do you go singing into every battle?”

Breyolt gave Llerandie a look before he cleared his throat and bellowed out a powerful C while slashing in the air with an imaginary sword. Llerandie slammed her fist on the table to encourage cessation. “Do you amuse yourself? Are you so sardonic? Can you not see anything without a foggy lens of misplaced ire? You aren’t to hate us. This is for the world, not for you. No, you aren’t going to get a medal. Not a scrap of glory. But you’ll be able to look into the eyes of the young, of the children who belong to other men because you can’t sire a worm, and see that they’ll have a future without a vain, selfish woman bringing hell upon every nation state she decides.”

The room fell silent and Breyolt felt around in his mouth with his tongue before he decided to speak again. Hautross wouldn’t look at him.

“Am I to understand you know something about her I don’t, that you learned in your studies, that makes you despise her with such great certainty?”

Llerandie stroked her fingers over the dark lines in the fur over her cheeks. Her eyes were closed so tightly Breyolt thought they would burst.

“I know everything about her and yet I know nothing. I know the what of her and not the why. The histories do not say what goes on in her mind. They do not say if she loves us, just that she favors some of us for reasons I do not know. Noble families have risen and fallen for eons. On a whim, without reason, they and their scions are put to death. Why? Because a rule was broken, but the rule is not named, not even called a rule,” she threw her hands up and her eyes blazed. “It is all so arbitrary – a roulette wheel. I don’t want to live on a bloody wheel, Breyolt. Do you? What am I saying? The ball has already landed on you and you don’t even know it!”

Hautross moved to her side and leaned down to place his arms around her shoulders, to hold her steady. She was shaking, and the tears found their way down her neck. The ram rested his face against hers, their horns clacking against each other.

“Don’t let him see you cry, Llera,” he said gently.

Breyolt was already looking away. He had folded his arms over his chest and was looking over the blades of the polearms standing only steps away from him.

“It’s terrifying,” Llerandie sobbed after much resistance, “we simply don’t know. Why doesn’t she tell us? What if I do something wrong one day? Make the wrong decision, think the wrong thought. Will she kill me? You, Len? Our girls?” Her words were anguish given form and for that Hautross had no panacea. He could only hold her. His body moved with hers as her chest heaved with sobs. The pain filled a minute, then two, then she found a kerchief in her dress and Hautross wiped her eyes. They were beaded with tears and a coarse red when Breyolt looked back at her. He stared at her. He lifted up his shoulders and stood, leaning over the table, over her seated figure.

“Don’t you ever talk about me that way again,” the wolf said in a low, soft voice. The chair skid across the floor as he shoved it aside and walked absconded to the door. He closed it softly behind him, and noticed how much his hands were shaking. She had torn him down to the bone with a single word. Sire. His pulse was racing; with effort he told himself to be calm. The twinge of pity came seconds later, as the anger faded. He thought to himself that he should apologize, go back in. Comfort her as he had when her father commanded her to stay away from him. He said goodbye in secret. Her bedchamber was a pool of ink where he could barely see the whites of her eyes in the effort of a single candle. All he could feel were her lips against his, her tears dropping onto his hands. The first snows were already falling and he felt the crunch of every step away from her that night. The snow was so dark, the sky moonless as his heart. When he looked back at her window the candle was out. It was ten years before he saw her again, and she had two beautiful little girls holding onto her skirts.

His first love. How he wished she was his, and those girls were his daughters. Even if they weren’t wolves, he could have taught them to be.

There was already a man in the room there with her, a strong, capable man who held her firm and with conviction. Who believed what he said when he consoled her. A man who might have lived a harder life than him. Breyolt chose to leave that man to care for her, and sauntered down the hallway toward somewhere he could be alone.

The next hallway looked over a low wall on the right side, between a row of columns, onto a small garden within four walls. On the other side, Breyolt could see another hall. He supposed he was in the keep somewhere, if indeed he was in a castle. As if a king with such aspirations would live in anything else. He placed his hand on the bare stone and closed his eyes to feel the walls of home. The spires of Linalita were tall and slender so the snow wouldn’t pile. The stone was crude, but thick, and fires were always burning in the great halls and the inner chambers. Here it was warm and Breyolt could smell the sea. The sky was bright and blue.

“Captain send you out for mouthing off?”

Breyolt turned to see a woman with large shoulders and a strong neck peeking out of her leathers. She was an ox and he had smelled her coming, but he didn’t care to interrupt. More prey. Granted, this prey wore the skins of her ilk. But those beasts were animals, not people.

“I can’t help but notice you’re all a bunch of prey serving a fat, spoiled predator. You sure you dislike the Queen? You’re working for her with a cock.”

The ox leaned her elbows on top of the short wall looking into the garden and her tail flicked lazily.

“Pardons milord, you said a lot of words. Let my lumbering grazer brain catch up.”

Breyolt chortled and leaned his hip against the wall, arms folding up at his chest. He saw a mace on the woman’s belt, scars on her arms. King Rolande’s crest was branded onto her upper arm, right over her shoulder. The mark stared back at him.

“Which one are you?” Breyolt asked flatly.

“Tija. No title. I can feel you staring. Yes, three flowers on a white shield. I don’t know what kind of flower that’s supposed to be.”

“It’s a yellow rose. The thorns are the giveaway. We have a lot of roses in Linalita when the snows melt for a month in spring.”

Tija barely turned her head to look at Breyolt with one green eye. “Things so delicate can live in all that snow?”

“Ha-ha. I like you. Being betrayed by you is going to be hilarious. Trying to put the jester out of work?”

The ox shrugged. “King’s fucking her, don’t think that’s possible, and apparently I don’t smell good enough for him to plough.”

“If he can even detect you over himself. I didn’t think it was possible for there to be a more detestable monarch than our All-Queen, but I had never met this slime. Oh, but excuse me, you’re wearing his mark.”

Tija laughed, stood up. She was a foot taller than Breyolt. She turned around and showed him her other arm. Another brand, scratched out and scarred over. She opened her collar. A brand on her chest, scratched out. They were unrecognizable other than categorically.

Breyolt caught his jaw gaping open and he made to spit over the wall, but Tija put a large hand on his chest.

“Swallow it.” He did. “I can’t believe you’re him. How do you do it? All of that war, and live? Is Cvaravald really all that demanding? You’re still rich when you’re there, aren’t you? How much worse can it be than training on your belly in the dirt and in alleys? How much better can you be than us?”

“You people really think I was raised on a down pillow, don’t you? Fuck off. I don’t have anything to prove.”

“It’s not every day I get to work with a Duke. How many pots does your ducal palace have to piss in?”

Breyolt grinned. “Dozens. They’re gold and silver and we display them on the shelves of our genteel cherrywood furnishings. Then we sleep in beds woven with clouds and fuck in condoms made from a poisonous fish that makes our cocks numb, but we have to do it because it’s en vogue and we’re all effete.”

Tija laughed and slapped the top of the wall. She spit into the garden and Breyolt followed suit.

“What about you, where are you from? Tija? Can I call you ‘Titan?’”

She nodded and her lips pressed together. “Sure. And I’ll call you ‘Pup’. I’m from everywhere. Anulish born, Glosserose raised. They say gladiators aren’t slaves but we are. We’re born slaves and we did slaves even if it isn’t in the coliseum.”

“Ah-ha… I should have known. You had that look about you. I trained a girl from Glosserose, she’s something else.”

“I know Carmot. She’s part of all this. Why do you think she freed you?”

Breyolt pressed his fists down onto the wall at his waist. “I’ll bet you helped convince her. Once in the ring always in the ring. Old friends made from old rivals, like graduates, the ones who make it out.”

“You wouldn’t know. No, Lady Llerandie convinced her. She is very persuasive in her way. Unlike you, something lives in her eyes. They’re unclouded. If you’ve got anything to live for I sure as hell can’t tell what it is.”

“Come now, I thought we were getting along famously? You want me to apologize for being who I am? You lot hired a warrior, not a revolutionary. I wanted to fuck the All-Queen, to hear her pretty voice squeal my name, and you want to slaughter her. I’ll take you as far as I deem appropriate. I’m not sure how far that is yet.”

A group of servants with their heads down passed behind them, heads down, not saying a word. Breyolt frowned with a twisted snarl at them until one glanced up, then they all quickened their steps.

“We’re leaving tonight, so I wanted to make fast friends. I’m not sure it’s working, so let me tell you this,” Tija said as she rose to her full height and puffed her chest out. Her breasts looked like they were made of pure muscle. “If someone in this betrays you, it won’t be the Captain, Lieutenant Eien, or me. Honor, Breyolt. Let’s at least have that.” Her hand yawned open, reached out and grabbed his wrist, shaking on his forearm. It took him a moment to return the gesture, but he returned it with a stiff jaw.

“Good. I’ll try to keep you out of trouble. When’s lunch?”

\--

Breyolt found lunch an agreeable mix of starches and proteins, especially eaten alone in the small room he was given. A pitcher of water rejuvenated him, made his skin feel elastic again, moistened his mouth and eyes and brought life back to his tail. After lunch he treated himself to a short nap. It had been a long time since he slept on a straw palliasse, but he managed to fall asleep. It was a deep sleep, only short because he was woken up when he would have slept another twelve hours. When he jolted up, he had been dreaming about tying a ribbon in someone’s hair and giving them a kiss on the cheek.

“Breyolt, come with me to the bailey. I want to make sure you’re still sharp.” Hautross’ voice was like a block of metal on top of his forehead, but Breyolt rose and shook himself. Without so much as a very well he rose and followed the ram, still rubbing the sand from his eyes and smoothing out his clothing. The tang of metal meeting metal in the air greeted him through a door and an arch into a bailey with sparse grass and dry dirt. There a group of tin soldiers in cheap breastplates and round helmets were hooting at the combined efforts of Tija and a badger nearly as big as her.

Tija was holding her mace in both hands, and the badger had just leapt out from under its point of impact. The ground shook, and while Tija hefted the hunk of steel upward, the badger headbutted her in the ribs. She laughed and brayed and barely moved an inch off her hooves.

“I’ve got the horns, idiot!” Tija bellowed, slamming her mace down again and nearly crushing the badger’s foot. He stepped down on the ball, hard, and took the motion into a right hook that sent Tija’s head swinging. She spit blood into the ground and roared, taking her mace back up so quickly that the badger flipped onto his back. She raised it above her head and brought it down. Breyolt saw the veins in her arms bulge as she controlled its momentum at the last second, pulling up so the badger received a light tap between the eyes. The soldiers watching jumped and yelled and raised their fists.

“Tija!” Hautross called. She was kneeling down to give her opponent a firm hand up off the ground. Both fell into ranks and saluted their captain. “Tija, get them out of here.”

“Go jerk off!” Tija commanded to the soldiers. Laughing like fresh recruits they filed out of the bailey, clapping each other on the back and shooting off salutes in Hautross’ direction. She, the captain, Breyolt, and the badger remained.

“Eien May, Breyolt Selfridge. Try not to claw each other when you shake hands.”

Eien stepped over to Breyolt. There was dust on his jerkin, stains on his knees. He didn’t carry a weapon, but his claws were fiendish, shards of obsidian on his mitt-like hands. The sun was behind the high walls of the bailey and shadows were cast over its west side. Breyolt and Hautross stood in a polyhedron of light on pale earth. The badger was in shadow and still the white streaks on his face seemed bright. His stocky figure lumbered up to Breyolt and he held out one of those fearsome hands.

“Look at you. You probably don’t remember me; I rode with you here. But before that I was in Cvaravald. The commandant practically had your picture hanging on the wall.”

Breyolt slowly took the man’s hand with, nonplussed and beginning to smile. “Then you’re a bastard every inch. ‘They don’t teach you how to live in Cvaravald…’”

“’They teach you to die fighting.’ Good to meet you, legend.”

“Only the dead can be legends,” Breyolt corrected.

“Son of a legend, then.”

Breyolt gave him a bouncing nod and let his head hang, grinning. “Should have told me I’d meet another who trained in the keep,” he said to Hautross. “If I’m to prove my worth here today, who the hell am I crossing swords with?”

Hautross strode to the empty space where Tija had moved aside. There the ground bore digs and marks from weapons, heels, knees, and bodies. He reached up and tilted his head back to slip his gorget off and tossed it into the dirt. His gloves followed, and he removed his sash of rough red linen from around his waist.

“Come here, Breyolt. We’re boxing.”

Breyolt smiled and bared his teeth, his eyes passed between the other two, who gave him appraising looks.

“I haven’t got anything to remove; forgive me.” Breyolt slurred, strolling up to the space in front of Hautross. He caught a right hook in the jaw before he could hear anyone tell him to start. His teeth dug into his cheek and tongue and he tasted iron. When he looked up, Hautross was taking the time to rub his knuckles. Breyolt leaned forward and was on him in a half-step, catching his forearm around his and pummeling his chest. Three thumps sounded out before Hautross wrestled free and turned to punch with his left hand.

The blow passed over Breyolt’s shoulder, too high and too slow. The wolf put distance between them, pacing back and forth, his nose pointing to the ground but his eyes blazing yellow fire at his adversary. Hautross scraped the dirt with his right hoof and instinctively lowered his head to Breyolt’s level. Before the motion was complete, he charged, one beat too soon. Breyolt never guessed he was impulsive, but the sucker punch a moment before had kept him alert. The wolf whirled around the pair of thick curled horns lowered at his chest, and thumped Hautross in the back, sending him forward and nearly onto his stomach before he caught himself. When he turned around he kept his chest bent and his body low, lunging and catching Breyolt around the waist and sending him backward. Breyolt felt fists in his sides; impact and pain and force.

Somehow Breyolt was aware of Eien and Tija’s eyes on him, he could barely make out their captivated expressions in the haze of dust and motion. His heel caught a rock and he fell backward onto his rump, Hautross on top of him, then up on his knees over him. Breyolt held his arms up to the sides of his face and turned his head while a furry of blows passed over them, trying to find an opening like rain on the roof of a cottage.

There was emotion in the way he fought: anger, impatience. Breyolt had fought men like him before, some he had killed. There were times he wondered whether it was ingrained in an animal like a ram to fight a wolf with blind desperation. Even the boxing match seemed like life and death to the man above him. He flailed for half a minute before Breyolt rolled him off his chest and onto the dirt, where he stayed, panting.

Breyolt sat up, reached over and patted Hautross twice on the back. The wolf got to his feet and caught his breath with his hands on his knees.

“Next time, ask me if I’m ready,” Breyolt huffed between breaths. “Honor, I thought I heard someone say.” He looked at Tija, who was sauntering over to the captain to give him a hand.

“I had been wanting to do that for years. I can’t kill you, but one good punch to the jaw…” Tija heaved the ram up to his hooves and he took his discarded clothes from Eien.

“For what, my wit?”

“For your eyes and your mouth. My wife isn’t a toy you can play with.”

“She bragged about it!” Breyolt laughed, “she was in the All-Queen’s palace and she was boasting, saying how she wanted me!”

“We all play roles when they are needed of us.”

“She gained a lot of weight for that role; is she going to get an award?”

Hautross narrowed one eye and shook his head. “She’s more beautiful now than she’s ever been.”

Breyolt looked up, mouth hanging open as he inhaled and exhaled deeply and slowly.

“One thing we can agree on,” Breyolt replied.

The captain stood and began tying his sash. “You two,” his words to Eien and Tija, “prepare the four-leggeds. It’s almost dark and I don’t want to lose any time.” The badger and ox immediately began to leave.

Breyolt rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. He spit blood. “There will be no further ruses. ‘Make sure I’m still sharp’, what a spineless ploy.” The wolf bit his thumb in the captain’s direction, then spit again. He started to walk after the other two.

“Where do you think you’re going, wolf?” Hautross’ voice followed him.

“If you want me to stay in arms’ reach at all times you should have kept me in chains.”

“Hold there. We ride in an hour. Be present in the stables at that time. Ask a servant if you can’t find them.”

Breyolt looked over his shoulder and tapped his nose before entering the castle. Eien and Tija went off down the hall with purpose, leaving Breyolt standing there alone. He decided he had best gather some information about this King Rolande, because he could remember nothing. He knew his father? So did everyone. Dissatisfied, Breyolt walked along the stone-walled hall until he found a set of stairs leading upward, the guard asleep against an archway. He slipped in and ascended the stairs to a hall of marble, wood and wallpaper. The smell of light, flowery perfume caught in his nose and he sneezed.

As he stepped into the hallway, he turned on his heel to check his blindspot, but from the other direction a mass of silk and crinoline collided with him, the body of a fine lady collapsing with him. They tumbled both to the floor with the woman wailing in surprie. Breyolt broke her fall, her torso falling hard against him. A fan clattered to the floor.

“My apologies, are you harmed?” She was still sitting atop him, her gloved hands pushing herself up to meet his eyes. Her ears twitched and a timid smile spread over her round hyena muzzle. She was beautiful, a pile of hair the color of pale chocolate and fur the color of a wheat field.

Breyolt saw her eyes glance down and he followed them to her cleavage, dusted freshly with powder to soften the fur, the length of it resting atop him heavily.

“The greatest harm was done every moment of my life before I saw this sight,” Breyolt said wide-eyed. There was a pause where her expression did not change, then the woman screeched with laughter. Breyolt slid out from under her and helped her stand, a process significantly lengthened and made difficult by her laughing.

From the arch Breyolt had come through the same sleeping guard came, holding his halberd with two hands.

“What’s here?” He demanded gruffly, but instantly showed disarm when he saw the woman laughing.

“I crashed into him,” she said between gasping attempts to catch her breath, “and he said the most ridiculous thing!”

The guard shrugged and returned to his post smiling.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman finally said, “I’m a bit lost, I was looking for the party, we were going to play cards. It’s my first time here. Who are you?” here her eyes drifted up and down at Breyolt’s clothes, “one of the King’s guards?”

“No, no,” Breyolt said quickly, then caught himself and added, “wait, yes.” His eyes took in her shape, a bell of a gown, shimmering robin’s egg in hue, her arms in long gloves and her neck wrapped in chunky gems on a gold chain.

The hyena bit her lip with her teeth and struggled not to laugh again.

“Well, can you show me to the party? Claudette will just have me if I’m too late to be dealt in.”

Breyolt, caught off guard at his new role, felt around in his mouth where Hautross’ punch had caused him to bite himself. He swallowed some blood.

“Say, who else is in attendance? I can fetch a servant for you to lead the way.”

The lady searched about her person for something, looking every more upset.

“A few friends…say, have you seen my fan?”

Breyolt crouched to the floor, found the lacy thing immediately, and stood up.

“Here you are.”

Her mouth yawned open so big was her smile and she tucked the fan between her dress and her chest.

“Yes, let me see, the Viscountess Antilopine, oh and the most wonderful special guest, Ollamayne, the bard? I’m told he has very fast hands when it comes to cards.”

“Fast hands. Well, to fondle all those necks…”

“Begging pardon?”

“Instruments.”

“Oh! Yes, my you are quite droll. Aside from that, the Baroness of the Northern Hills, that’s Claudette, oversees all the trade routes in that area, a very sharp mare. I cannot recall the name of the merchant who will be there but he paid an exorbitant sum and I think the King is going to give him a title. But listen to me!”

Now the lady laughed softly and reached over to pinch Breyolt’s cheek. He shut one eye as she grabbed and shook his cheek with her delicate fingers.

“I needn’t bore a guard with all this nobility nonsense. Directions will do, now?”

“Ah… down the hall, turn left, pass through the antechamber into the east parlor.”

The lady nodded with a delicate incline of her head and turned about, her shoes clicking on the marble floor.

For a moment, Breyolt thought to chase after her, ask her name, but a dalliance would have taken more than the hour he had, and so he acquiesced to never having that knowledge. He was still half-sure this grand scheme was all an elaborate way to get him killed without officially putting him to death. These were his thoughts as he made his way back down the stairs, passed the guard, and sought the stables. He might as well get it over with.


End file.
